


Dragon Marked

by lodessa



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abusive Viserys, Alternate Universe - Academia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, Dreams, Drinking, Dubious Consent, Emotional Infidelity, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Past Jorah/Lynesse, Past Lives, Pregnancy, Reincarnation, Romantic Soulmates, Secrets, Sexual Content, Sexual Fantasy, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Spying, Tags May Change, Temporary Dany/Drogo, the dubious consent in Dany/Drogo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-06-16 01:56:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19634797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: When recent PhD graduate Daenerys Targaryen and down on his luck Professor Jorah Mormont happen across one another, neither of them has any idea that the result will shake not only their own understanding of reality but also the fate of the world itself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go. The Multichapter Soulmark/Reincarcation/Modern Academia AU is finally getting started.
> 
> Please suspend disbelief on everyone having the same exact name across lifetimes. I felt it would be too confusing/distancing to have them change.

The smoke burns her nostrils and throat and stings her eyes. The haze is so thick she can barely make out the figure moving towards her, though it is not terribly far away now.

“Thank the gods,” a low masculine voice cries out, and she feels a sense of relief wash over her at hearing him, which matches his tone. “When the palace started to crumble I thought…”

“I was at the blue temple,” she says, rushing forward towards him and nearly falling to the ground as she encounters an unexpected ridge on the stone floor. “I thought if I could initiate the ritual things might slow down, but it was too late.”

She’s saved from that by the owner of that comforting voice, as he catches her with both hands on her arms, steadying her as she loses balance. He’s much taller than her, older than her too, but the main thing she registers is the look in his eyes as they meet her own.

“I never should have left your side,” he tells her, as she feels a tenderness well up within her, despite the evident urgency of the situation.

“You did as I commanded,” she reminds him, reaching up to wipe a flake of ash from his face. “I thought we had more time.”

“It is far worse even than we thought,” he confirms. “The green temple is no more.”

“If only we had more time,” she sighs, though the air cuts to breath in.

“I’ve failed you,” he starts to apologize, but she cuts him off, wrapping her other hand around the back of his neck and pulling him down into a kiss that speaks to great familiarity.

He kisses her back, arms wrapping around her protectively and she feels safe, despite the quaking of the ground under their feet and the fire raining down from the sky.

“There you are,” a woman’s voice says, pulling her back from the moment of solace. “Stop wasting precious time, you two. We need to meet the others at the black temple.”

Regretfully, she relinquishes her grip on the man, though he keeps one arm wrapped around her protectively, as they follow the woman in red towards the central temple.

More and more buildings are falling around them, and the smoke is so thick she cannot keep from coughing.

The red priestess glances back towards them, to make sure they are following, before hurrying inside the final temple which still stands somehow, her red hair like dried blood in the dim light.

Ahead, she can see the green and blue priestesses already waiting at their points on the great triangle inscribed in the center of the temple floor.

“You asked for time,” the blue priestess says.

“We cannot hold back the doom,” the green priestess tells them.

“But we can give you another chance,” the red priestess adds.

“More than one more chance,” the blue priestess corrects.

“The soulmark makes it possible,” she green priestess explains, and she looks down and sees the winding serpentine shape of a dragon, traveling across both of their wrists, where her hand is clasped in his, one image split between them.

“Do it,” she tells the three priestesses.

“Are you sure?” her lover asks, “I would follow you into a thousand lifetimes, but would you truly bind your soul indefinitely like this, with no promise of respite?”

“As long as you are by my side,” she tells him, “I fear no fate that can beset me.”

“Meet you shall, princess,” the green priestess confirms, “But the rest of it is up to you two to figure out.”

“Our orders have left guideposts,” the red priestess promises. “If anyone can right the wrongs of our people’s folly, it will be you.”

Daenerys wakes with her throat screaming for moisture, as if the smoke and ash of her dream had been real.

Slipping out from under Drogo’s heavy arm, she stumbles into the bathroom and eagerly drinks from the sink to soothe her parched throat. It’s not the first time she’s had these sort of dreams, but they never fail to leave her feeling shaken and uneasy.

Her brother used to say she read too many fantasy novels, not understanding why she did so: to escape the hounding of reporters, the conspiracy theorists, his violent outbursts. He’d blamed her sleeping mind’s imagination on books not reality.

She tries to call up the details of this one, but it is already fading from her mind, leaving behind only the feeling of urgency, ashes in her throat, and those deep blue eyes staring into hers.

Grey predawn light is starting to sneak in through the window, and Daenerys reaches for her robe, deciding she might as well get some work done, since she doesn’t feel like she is going to be falling back asleep any time soon.

Tiptoeing down the hallway into the kitchen, she sets her laptop down on the table and puts the kettle on for tea She’s already gotten through reading about half a dozen emails when the water boils and she has to get up and fix it, opting for honey instead of plain sugar in the hope that it will drive away the lingering sensation of rawness from her throat.

Most of the emails are uninteresting, a reminder about the schedule for this next month’s conference, students asking for extensions on their midterm papers, some Dothraki Sea College campus safety alerts, her boss reminding her about some upcoming deadlines, along with the usual smattering of spam emails.

There’s one that catches her attention though, and not simply because it is from a Westeros University address. No one from the school, which her father had headed before his sudden death, has wanted anything to do with her up until now.

_Dr. D. Targaryen,_

_I am writing in response to your recent publication on the use of particular organic compounds in coming of age ceremonies in pre colonial cultures across continents. Not only did I find your analysis of the similarities between certain substances which had previously not been connected in any form insightful and promising, but your breakdown of the differences in regional metabolic norms was, in my opinion, rather inspired. My own expertise is in a related branch of biochemical analysis and, while I am sure you have no need of it, I would like to offer my assistance in whatever limited way you might wish to make use of it for future work you may pursue in this field._

_Sincerely,  
Dr. J. Mormont_

Daenerys quickly decides to pull up this Mormont’s publication history, wondering exactly what his interest could be in a paper that has garnered none thus far. Nothing related to her dissertation really has, and her advisor has suggested that she might want to use this postdoc position as an opportunity to move in a different direction, if she wants to advance her career.

So it is, that Drogo finds her, multiple cups of tea later, squinting and hunched over her laptop, one hand on a notepad doing calculations and the other one on the keyboard, as she finds herself trying to figure out exactly how the data from his man’s last three papers might be used to support the findings she’s supposed to be moving on from.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jorah meets Daenerys in person, after they have been emailing extensively. She is everything he imagined and so much more, and she has a proposal for him.

Ever since Lynesse left him bankrupt, financially and in reputation, Jorah has been simply struggling to keep his head above water. He lost his home, his ladder faculty position, his father’s respect, and his pride. But he’s kept going. He’s managed to cobble together a combination of research work and lectureships, moving from one city to another with whatever short term contracts he manages to secure, from one depressing dingy pre-furnished studio apartment to another.

Since he doesn’t have much of a social life, he spends a lot of time reading. He tells himself he’s looking for an in to a better position, and that’s true, but it’s also something to keep him mind off his situation. He tried escapist literature and handcrafts, but neither of those require enough focus and attention to detail to truly keep his mind from wandering, so now he sticks to academic reading. 

The last name on the abstract caught his attention first, of course. He’d been in one of Professor Aerys Targaryen’s last research studies as an undergrad, and it is impossible to forget the man: paranoid, intense, driven. The official story is that his death was an accident, but no one really believes that, or that all his work had somehow mysteriously vanished in an unfortunate combination of computer malfunctions and fire. 

Jorah has his own reasons to believe there was something more to the story, but he’s always been too pragmatic to push it, even before his ill advised midlife crisis flung him into survival mode. 

Either way, he quickly found himself engrossed in what this D. Targaryen had to say, rather than just idly curious as to whether there was a relation between the two. (A quick websearch had established that yes, Daenerys Targaryen, a recent doctoral graduate of Pentos now working at Dothraki Sea, was the daughter of the late professor.) Jorah quickly realized that she was bright, innovative, and (whether she realized it or not) working on something that tied into the research her father had been involved in before his death.

He’d reached out to her, via email, after more deliberation than he wants to admit. She’d responded though, rather enthusiastically, full of curiosity and clearly having read through at least the majority of his publication history. He hopes she hadn’t searched more deeply into him than that, though he supposes if she did that means she decided he was worth corresponding with anyway.

Either way, exchanging emails with Daenerys has been the most energizing thing to happen in his life in ages, and Jorah is thankful for it. 

He’s still not sure why he didn’t mention to her that he was going to this conference, in her town, and at which he’s now discovering she’s actually presenting, as he looks through the schedule after checking in. Maybe he didn’t want to seem too pushy, but now he thinks it’s probably weirder that he didn’t .

He considers letting her know now, in these days of smartphones he could do it in an instant, but he decides not to. He’ll just go to her presentation, and then he can introduce himself in person. Or not, he lies to himself, knowing that he packed his handwritten notes from twenty years ago on purpose with the intention of presenting them to her in person as a gift, a little glimpse into her father’s work.

He supposes he should have considered that she would be breathtaking to behold. Daenerys Targaryen is a vision in a simple sensible grey skirt suit, that seems to highlight her silver blonde hair… which in turn is pulled back in a way that draws the eye to her slender neck. _Careful, Jorah,_ he cautions himself, _Have you learned nothing?_

It turns out that her presentation is not well attended, which is a shame really. Jorah thinks she is impressive in person, and not just because she’s stunningly beautiful: those unnerving violet eyes of her father’s are transformed into something intoxicating instead in her. She’s organized and clear and well spoken, though he senses she’s a little nervous. But the strangest thing is that he gets the distinct sensation she’s staring at him throughout the whole thing, like she recognizes him. That, he is sure, must be his imagination.

He waits until the few people who are clearly coworkers or former classmates walk away to approach her, though now it is incredibly evident that she has noticed him as she keeps glancing in his direction. He wonders if she recognizes him from his online profile, or if he’s just staring and that’s what draws her attention.

Either way, her eyes meet his, as he walks towards her.

“I’m sorry. Do I know you?” she asks in a way that seems apologetic rather than accusatory, “Because you seem so familiar and yet I can’t quite place you.”

“Only in a manner of speaking,” he tells her, holding out his hand. “Jorah Mormont. We’ve been emailing.”

“Oh...” She takes his offered hand. “How wonderful to meet you in person, Professor Mormont.”

She looks up at him like there’s more she isn’t saying, but not in a bad way and he has the strongest sense of déjà vu, as if this has happened before, as though he’s met her before. It’s quite impossible, but he feels it nonetheless. With some difficulty, he manages to ignore the sense that he ought to bend and kiss her hand like he’s a character in some period piece film, instead of shaking it like a reasonable human being.

“I hope I’m not being too presumptuous…” he doesn’t quite apologize as they let go of one another’s hand.

Déjà vu doesn’t mean anything, he reminds himself. He’d had a sense of familiarity when he met Lynesse, and clearly that hadn’t meant it was meant to be or even a good idea. Though, that spark of recognition had been only a faint blip compared to the overwhelming awareness of Daenerys’ presence. It was like comparing a tiny steam to an entire ocean.

“Nonsense,” she assures him, reaching out briefly to touch his forearm reassuringly. If I’d known you were here, I would have credited you in more detail on your recent insights being responsible for those last couple slides worth of information.”

“It is truly not necessary,” he tells her. He’d been surprised to see himself cited at all. “It’s your work.”

“It is such a happy happenstance that you are here,” she smiles at him with an enthusiasm that is infectious. “I’ve so enjoyed our dialogue and I actually had something I wanted to propose to you.”

“I’m all ears,” he tells her, relaxing slightly. 

She doesn’t seem off put by his showing up like this. In fact, it doesn’t feel like she’s being prefunctoraily polite. He supposes that perhaps she really has enjoyed their correspondence as well, after all her responses digitally have also been expansive. 

“I’m supposed to be meeting with someone, from an agency who might fund research related to what we’ve been discussing, for lunch in less than 20 minutes,” she sighs, glancing over towards the clock on the wall, before asking, “I don’t suppose you’d want to join.”

“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” he demures, even though he thinks he knows what she is thinking and he hopes he’s right. 

He wants to work more closely with her. He wants to spend time with her. More importantly, this is the kind of thing that could get his career back on track.

“You wouldn’t be,” she dismisses the out he’s given her, before adding conspiratorially, “If anything you’d be doing me a favor. You’re far more experienced with this kind of thing than I am, I’m sure.”

That’s probably true, he considers. She’s clearly brilliant, but this is probably her first time going after funding herself, instead of working off someone else’s grant. She has all the requisite pieces to be very successful at it, but he remembers being young and new at this, unsure of how to proceed. 

“Then I’d be delighted,” he tells her, which is not a lie.

Lunch is at a Mantari restaurant a few blocks away, an odd choice for a work lunch, but then Melisandre immediately strikes him as anything but an ordinary funding agent. Long red hair, flowing bohemian inspired clothing, a large quantity of sterling silver and garnet jewelry of the sort one purchased from a shop that eternally smelled of incense, Melisandre seems more like the kind of person who offers to read your palm than someone in a position to hand out a few million dollars.

Odder still, it seems as though she already had been expecting him to join them before they arrived, though he hadn’t noticed Daenerys so much as pull out her phone to potentially notify her as they walked over.

But that isn’t even the most surprising thing to happen over the course of lunch. That is reserved for the moment where Daenerys removes her jacket to avoid the risk of the cuff ending up in the food as she reaches forward to share in the communal style meal. 

Jorah has somewhat gotten used to seeing tattoos on people that apparently don’t exist over the past two decades. It started in college. It started around the time he participated In Aerys Targaryen’s study, if he’s being completely honest with himself. 

So it’s not that he sees one wrapping around Daenerys’ slender white wrist which surprises him. It’s what it is specifically. Jorah glances down at his own arm, at the serpentine half of a dragon that no one else can see, and then back at Daenerys’, where somehow the other half of that dragon appears before his eyes.

_If we held hands the marks would line up perfectly,_ he can’t help thinking.

“Dr. Mormont?” 

Jorah looks up to find that both women are looking at him curiously.

“Sorry, ladies. I got lost in my thoughts for a moment there.” He shakes his head with a smile, pointedly not looking back down at Daenerys’ wrist or his own.

“It’s a bit of a flight from Westeros,” Daenerys smiles softly at him. “You must be jet lagged and here I am dragging you around in the heat.”

“No excuse,” he apologizes. “Forgive me.”

“It is cold in your country, is it not?” Melisandre comments more than asks.

“Compared to here, certainly,” he agrees. 

“I have to admit,” Daenerys offers, “I don’t really remember much from Westeros, we left when I was so young.”

Jorah wonders if he should say something about the circumstances under which that departure happened: her father’s death. He hadn’t really known the man, but anyone in their field would know about what happened to some extent. Should he offer condolences twenty years late?

“I forsee that you will return in the not so distant future,” Melisandre replies before he decides what to say. For a moment, he’s once again struck by the feeling that she seems more like a new age medium than anything else, but then she adds, “Your grant proposal lists multiple sites in Westeros as points of interest for data collection.”

“I know it’s a rather extensive list,” Daenerys owns, “But the diversity of samples is really critical to finding something that’s broadly applicable, instead of just an interesting quirk.”

“I am going to suggest adding half a dozen additional sites, particularly one in the Shadow Lands,” Melisandre informs.

That takes Jorah by surprise. He’s never seen someone representing a funding agency suggest expanding the scope of a project before. He silently questions why the Asshai Group is so interested in those particular sites, and the project in general. 

Melisandre seems faintly amused throughout lunch, in a way that Jorah doesn’t trust but also makes him think she is definitely planning to fund Daenerys’ research. He wonders if he can convince her to let him look over the paperwork before she signs it, just to make sure there’s nothing untoward or sinister about the arrangement.

“Our research, I’m hoping,” Daenerys tells him with a smile, as he shares this opinion with her on the way back to the hotel. “That’s what I wanted to ask you about, whether you’d be willing to come work with me on it, if I am able to get the funding to pay for us both. I know it’s a big ask. You have your own work I’m sure and I have no idea about your family situation or whether there’s any way it would make sense on your end… but I could really use the assistance. I could really use you.”

“My answer is yes,” he cannot bring himself to pretend to hesitate. “I offered my assistance before we exchanged words of any kind, and from what I know about you so far I’d be delighted to work under you.”

“There’s no one you need to consult…” she asks, “No Mrs. Mormont who might object to being dragged to another continent?”

“Not at the moment, no,” he evades, wondering if this is a test, if she knows about Lynesse. 

“In that case,” she tells him, “we really ought to celebrate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't wait to hear what you guys think of this first glimpse into Jorah's head.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys finds herself overwhelmed by the discovery that the man she's been collaborating with over email has the same face as the one she has been seeing in her dreams for many years. She can't help wondering just how deep that similarity runs.

Daenerys really isn’t sure what possessed her to pry into Jorah’s marital status. It was completely inappropriate and it is definitely none of her business. 

The truth is that she doesn’t know what to make of anything that’s happened today, not since she caught sight of him across the room while she was giving her presentation. She’s not entirely sure how she managed to get through that endeavor, as distracted as she was.

How could she not be, when his face has appeared in her dreams for as long as she can remember? 

He must have noticed her staring, but she couldn’t help it. The very night before she had dreamed of this man she’d never met but now was sitting in front of her. 

At least the night before’s dream had been innocent enough: She’d dreamed she was riding a beautiful silver horse. She’d been tired and her body ached and yet she had been forced to keep going on for hours and hours in agony and exhaustion. When at last she was able to stop, she felt as though she might faint, like she had no strength to find her way to the ground, but then he was there: her knight, the man whose face frequents her dreams though she’d never seen it in real life. His hair was sandy colored and his eyes were impossibly blue. His face indicated that he was in his middle years and yet his arms were so strong and secure as he reached out and lifted her down from her horse. 

She’d still awoken feeling a vague sort of guilt about habitually dreaming of this man her subconscious had invented long before she met Drogo, even though it was not one of those times where the dreams she had featuring him were rather more explicit.

Then he’d been there at her presentation, a real man and not a phantom of her sleeping mind. His eyes truly are that blue. Truly, she doesn’t remember anything she said up there, all she could think of was wondering who he was and how he was here.

She hadn’t been surprised exactly, that he’d hung around afterwards. Surely, if the vague feeling of familiarity she’d had upon meeting Drogo had come true, this tidal wave of awareness, the dreams… they had to mean something.

When he had revealed his identity, that he was the person who had reinvigorated her motivation and curiosity for her own research, whose emails made her feel more herself than she had in a good while, it felt right.

She’d already been planning to ask Jorah to work with her if the grant funding went through, and now here he was, in person, and somehow his is the face she knows from her dreams. 

She’s not sure what she imagined he would be like, but it definitely wasn’t this: broad shouldered, filling out his shirt and slacks so well, chiseled cheekbones and jawline, penetrating stormy blue eyes; he looks like he just walked out of the cover of a yacht magazine or an advertisement for Viagra. She definitely hadn’t expected for him to be the man she’s been seeing in dreams for so long she doesn't remember when it began.

It has been everything she can do not to make a fool of herself. She’s not even certain how well she’s doing at that.

At least Jorah seems to think their meeting with Melisandre went well, which is a miracle considering how off her focus is today. He’s also agreed to come work with her, so she can’t have seemed as scatterbrained as she has felt.

“My boss is hosting a little get together after dinner,” she suggests, realizing that she’s probably just given off entirely inappropriate vibes, if she hasn’t already been all afternoon, and deciding that maybe a somewhat collegial context can help get her back on track. “Why don’t you join me? 

“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Jorah says, with the air of a man who thinks an invitation might not be sincere.

“Nonsense,” she tells him, before realizing she can kill two birds with one stone, “Everyone at the lab is always complaining about my never bringing anyone with me, and my husband absolutely hates going to these things; because, we always end up talking about work… or rather the way we talk about everything is rather academic for him.”

Drogo had once made it about forty five minutes before succumbing to his own restlessness at one of these things. That was a record for him.

Jorah doesn’t respond exactly, looking at bit taken aback, though she’s not sure whether that’s at her insistence that he join her or her dropping into the conversation that she is married, after she’s been staring at him uncontrollably since she laid eyes on him this morning. 

“I’ll pick you up outside the lobby here at a quarter to nine,” she tells him as if it’s settled, not sure what else to do. “I’ve got to swing by home and change into something more informal.”

“It certainly sounds better than overpriced drinks at the hotel bar,” he affirms.

They go their separate ways to different break out sessions, which is probably a good thing, because Daenerys definitely needs to regroup. It’s hard to sort through the sense of ease she immediately feels with Jorah, let alone the complexity of him turning out to be the man she’s been been dreaming of all this time… or at the very least to have the same face, the same eyes, the same voice that seems to reverberate through her very soul.

She’s not sure what to make of any of it. 

It’s probably a good thing that Drogo is out of town for the weekend. He’s not a big texter or phone person, so Daenerys will have some time to compose herself; before, he’s around to notice she’s acting weird. 

She decides to skip out on the last session she’d planned to attend and head home early. She could definitely use a long shower and she promised Melisandre that she’d email her an amended version of her grant proposal that includes those additional sites.

Checking her phone as she walks to the car, Daenerys notices three missed calls and about a dozen texts from Viserys. She hadn’t expected to hear from him at all, but the insistence is in character, as is the increasing volatility of his messages. 

She will have to deal with him, eventually. Daenerys loves her brother, it’s been just the two of them since her mother died in the years following her father’s death, but he can be exhausting. She’s feeling off balance and she doesn’t want to snap at him. 

She tells herself that she will handle whatever it is that Viserys wants after she has a chance to wipe the day’s grime off. She hopes he isn’t pushing whatever it is because he’s found out Drogo is out of town and won’t be around to physically remove him if he gets out of hand.

Normally, knowing that Viserys is in one of his moods would ruin Daenerys’ day, but she catches sight of herself in the reflection of her car’s window, as she goes to grab the rest of her stuff from the trunk on her way into the house, and notices that she is grinning like a fool.

She tells herself her presentation went well, and that she’s excited about the grant Melisandre has all but assured her is going to go through, but she knows that’s not the truth. Jorah is the source of her smile. 

_He’s not really the man from your dreams,_ she tells herself. She needs to be careful about how easy it would be to forget that, to expect him to act according to all kinds of visions her brain has concocted using his image over the years. But that is a recipe for disaster. She doesn’t know this man, not really, and there’s no way he can be exactly like the one in her dreams. 

If he was, she honestly doesn’t know what she would do with that information. After all, she’s a married woman and not some fanciful little girl.

As always, she’s grateful for the power of the water pressure and heater this place has. Drogo always claims she’s going to melt her skin off with the scalding temperature she prefers, but Daenerys finds it energizing.

There are more messages from Viserys when she gets out of the shower, but she still needs to get those files to Melisandre and get dressed. When Viserys gets like this, dealing with him is never a brief matter.

As she sits in her robe, going over the changes she needs to make to accommodate more dig sites, Daenerys sighs, before admitting that really she needs to ask Jorah for his advice on some of the additional costs that need to be calculated in.

She texts him first, asking if he’s available for a phone call.

His response is timely, and well punctuated and capitalized, a marked difference from some other people Daenerys knows.

He picks up on the second ring.

“Is something the matter?” he asks, and she realizes she’d already been downplaying the memory of his voice in her mind. It’s warm and rich and it makes her feel at ease immediately.

“No,” she assures him, though she has the strangest impulse to tell him about her brother for no good reason. “I’m just adjusting the grant paperwork for Melisandre, and I could use your help with some of the changes to cost projections and the like.”

It’s eight, before she realizes it.

“I’ll see you in a little under an hour,” she reminds him, as they finally end their call.

Her hair has more or less air dried, the result being a cascade of ripples down her back, and Daenerys decides there’s no point in wasting time straightening it, which she may or may not have time for. Instead, she digs a pair of jeans out of her drawer and a sleeveless blouse with metallic detailing where it ties around her neck from her closet, along with some well worn leather sandals. It’s a casual get together, but she is all too aware that she has a youthful face and a t-shirt makes her look like an undergrad.

Jorah is waiting out front as she pulls up. 

The sight of him in snugly fitting jeans and a soft faded gold colored button up shirt he’s rolled halfway up his arms and left the top couple buttons of undone, like he’s in an advertisement for a luxury vacation, is doing nothing to help her with the resolution she made with herself during her shower not to imagine his hands on her body.

“You’re on time,” he comments, as he seats himself in her passenger seat.

“So are you,” she replies, dragging her eyes away from his exposed forearms and hands resting on his thighs with intention.

She catches him looking at her with an expression she isn’t quite sure what to make of, as she lifts her gaze. It doesn’t feel lewd, but it is certainly focused. Whatever it is, she supposes she can’t judge, not with the way her eyes were just wandering.

“What’s that you have there?” she asks, registering belatedly he’s folding a folder with those capable looking hands of his.

“Oh,” he looks a little abashed at her mentioning it, “It’s probably a foolish impulse on my part, but when we got to talking, I remembered that I had some old notes and handouts from a course I took from your father. I thought… well I know you never really got a chance to know him, and I thought maybe they might give you a glimpse into who he was. If you wanted.”

It is monumentally thoughtful, Daenerys recognizes. It might be the most actually thoughtful gesture someone has ever made to her in fact. 

“These are originals…” she realizes. “Surely some archivist-”

Pretty much all trace of her father’s work was lost in the fire or some other quirk of fate. Daenerys knows precious little about what he was doing or what kind of man he really was. No one does. Papers from one of his final semesters, could surely fetch a tidy sum in certain circles.

“Anyone who took the course might have this kind of stuff lying around. Really, it’s a tiny token of my appreciation, in the face of your generosity.”

“I didn’t realize you knew him,” she comments, realizing that he is uncomfortable with the deserved appreciation. 

“I didn’t really,” he tells her, “I mean not on a personal level. I did take a course from him, though, and participate in that last study he was conducting at the time of his death.”

“What was he like?” she can’t help asking.

“Intense,” Jorah tells her. “He was intense.”

She can’t help thinking of Viserys, and the way he demands attention immediately in the moment he wants it. Then again, people have also described her as intense… very rarely in a good way.

Jorah hits it off with pretty much everyone she works with, which doesn’t surprise Daenerys, though she does find it impressive, watching him adapt himself to each individual in conversation. It doesn’t seem fake, as she is always afraid of being in these situations, and she wonders how he manages it.

Then the alarm system alert goes off on her phone. Opening the app, Daenerys squints at the front door camera video feed and groans. Only one person out there shares her silvery white hair, and she’s been ignoring his calls all day.

“Shit…”

“Daenerys?” Jorah’s attention is immediately back on her, though a moment before he had been in the middle of a rather technical discussion with one of her labmates. He looks genuinely concerned.

“It’s my brother…” she sighs. “Apparently he’s shown up at my house and set off the alarm… again.”

“I gather you were not expecting him” he ventures.

“He was supposed to be in Lys,” she tells him. “I suppose it is my fault for ignoring him trying to get ahold of me earlier, but if I don’t get there to clear things up in the next fifteen minutes, I’m going to have to go down and get him out of lockup again.”

“Well then,” Jorah replies, “We’d better be on our way.”

“I’m sorry to drag you into this,” she apologizes, as they walk back to her car. “I’d drop you off first, but…”

“Really,” he assures her, “It’s alright. Pardon my saying so, but you seen less than thrilled by the prospect of seeing your brother after he’s been away.”

“Viserys is… complicated,” she says, wishing there were a way to avoid letting Jorah see the mess her brother has become, but at the same time glad that she isn’t going to be alone with Viserys, given that he is doubtless in one of his moods. “What happened to our father… it did something to him.”

“Why do I get the feeling you are being overly charitable in your description of him?” Jorah asks, but it doesn’t feel pushy. It feels kind. 

“I suppose you are going to see it for yourself. Viserys can be volatile, and it's probably not a coincidence he showed up tonight, when its public knowledge that Drogo, that’s my husband, is going to be elsewhere.”

“I gather the two don’t get along.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” she sighs. 

The last time Viserys showed up like this, Drogo had dislocated his jaw and literally tossed him off the property with a warning that if he showed up again he’d make sure no one ever found his body.

She hopes Drogo isn’t checking his phone at the moment, as she speeds back to the house. She manages to get there before the police at least, and deactivate the alarm. They still show up, but she’s able to explain the situation and assure them that no report needs to be filed.

Viserys is in every bit as foul of a mood as she had feared and it turns out he’s drunk as well. 

“Who the fuck is this?” he demands, looking past her at Jorah, who has been standing there quietly through her whole conversation with the authorities. “Your new sugar daddy? Does Drogo know you’re replacing him with the geriatric model or is it your little secret?”

“Stop it!” she hisses, “Professor Mormont is a colleague! Haven’t you already made enough of a fool out of both you and me tonight?”

She flinches, as Viserys raises his hand, but the blow never lands. Jorah catches her brother’s arm mid air and twists it back around behind his back. She has no idea how he reacted so quickly, as he’d been over by the car the last time she checked. 

“I believe you owe your sister an apology,” he says in a level measured tone that feels more like a threat than a shout might have. Not a threat to her, of course, but a promise of protection. 

“I don’t owe my whore sister anything, and whoever you are you have no business getting in the middle of family affairs,” Viserys retorts, though there is fear in his eyes. That’s the truth about her brother, for all his cruelty and big words, he’s a coward.

“You should go,” she tells Viserys, knowing there is no reasoning with him when he’s like this. “We can talk tomorrow, when you’ve had a chance to… rest.”

“Daenerys?” Jorah asks, clearly hesitant to let go of his hold on Viserys.

“I don’t need an apology from him,” she assures him. “If anything I should be providing you with one for dragging you into this mess.”

Viserys slinks off, muttering under his breath, and Daenerys knows she probably shouldn’t let him drive in this state, but it's not a fight she can bring herself to start right now.

“You’re shaking…” Jorah notes, reaching out but stopping short of touching her arm, and she realizes that she is.

“I’ll be fine in a minute,” she promises. “Gods, I’m so sorry about this.”

“Hey…” he murmurs, “Stop apologizing. Your brother may blame you for his problems, but he’s wrong. Why don’t you sit down for a minute, maybe have a cup of tea?”

She fumbles with her keys as she tries to open the door, dropping them on the ground, and he kneels to pick them up. His eyes are so earnest and deep blue as he looks up at her from that position, and she feels so strongly that all of this has happened before: him protecting her, him comforting her, him kneeling before her.

She lets him open the door for her, walking inside and beckoning him to join her.

“I can call a cab,” he offers, but he doesn’t seem anxious to go and Daenerys can’t help wanting him to stay a bit longer. He makes her feel safer somehow, despite the fact that inviting a man she just met into her house late at night when her husband is out of town should feel anything but.

“Won’t you stay a little while?” she asks, “I’d feel better not being alone right now.”

It’s the truth, and it's not as if he hasn’t noticed and commented on how shaken up she is. 

“I’m happy to stay as long as you need,” he offers, “I just wouldn’t want to overstay my welcome.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she says, leading him into the kitchen and walking distractedly to refill the kettle and put it on. 

“There’s no need,” Jorah insists, noticing her struggling to reach the basket of tea on a tall shelf and walking up to pull it down for her. “You should sit down,” he urges. “Why don’t you tell me where the mugs are and I’ll make the tea.”

She nods, sinking down onto one of the chairs at the table and gesturing to the appropriate cabinet for the mugs. She feels tired now, like all the energy has been drained from her body and she’s been left limp and heavy limbed. 

“Something non caffeinated I think,” Jorah comments as much to himself as to her it feels, though she notices he chooses earl grey for himself.

“Peppermint,” she confirms, “If you want milk and sugar for yours, the sugar is next to the toaster and the milk is in the refrigerator door.”

“That’s not the first time he’s swung at you, is it?” Jorah asks, as he sets down both mugs of tea and seats himself across the table from her.

“Viserys has always had a temper,” she doesn’t exactly admit. “I should have gotten back to him earlier instead of letting him get worked up.”

“He’s lucky you aren’t pressing charges,” Jorah insists.

She knows how she sounds. She can’t bring herself to cut her brother off completely, though. He doesn’t have anybody else.

“He’s the only family I have. It’s been just the two of us since our mother died.”

“That’s no excuse,” Jorah shakes his head, not critical but firm.

“It’s not,” she owns, “And yet he’s still my brother. I know I sound like every pathetic victim of domestic abuse still in denial.”

“I’d never describe you as pathetic,” Jorah assures her, eyes seemingly focused on her hand gripping her mug of tea.

“Thank you for stopping him,” she says. 

She looks across the table at Jorah, and feels a sense of comfort in the sight of him there. She wonders vaguely, if she is really awake right now, or whether this is another of her dreams. He always protects her in her dreams, the man who looks like Jorah.

“It’s what anyone would have done,” he tells her.

“No,” she shakes her head. “It’s not.”

She thinks, sometimes, that is the reason she married Drogo, as much as the sense that it was bound to happen: he was the first person to put himself between her and Viserys’ cruelty.

“When you said my father was intense…” she doesn’t quite ask.

“I didn’t know him well enough to say,” Jorah replies, clearly knowing what she means anyway, “But there were certainly rumors.”

“I have… well I don’t know if it is a real memory or just something my brain came up with to process what it was like living with Viserys, but in it I remember my mother doing her best to cover up bruises on her face with makeup.”

“My own mother died young,” Jorah shares, and she feels grateful for the offer of some reciprocal personal knowledge, as well as the opening to change topics. “My memories of her get hazier with every passing year.”

She asks him, then, if he has any siblings, and he tells her doesn’t and regales her with entertaining stories about his cousins instead. The conversation flows easily, as if she’s known him her whole life instead of only having just met him.

She glances at the clock and realizes it is well past two in the morning.

“I’m being selfish,” she apologizes. “Here you are, jet lagged, and I’ve kept you hostage all this time.”

“I can’t imagine you want to be alone here, knowing your brother might decide to show back up,” he offers sympathetically.

“Am I that transparent?” 

“Don’t you have a friend you could call?” he asks.

“Not really,” she admits. “Everyone I know is really through Drogo or a work acquaintance. I’ll be fine, though. Let me grab my keys and I’ll drive you back. Unless…”

“Unless?” he prompts her to continue her train of thought.

“There’s a guest room,” she offers. “Selfishly, I would feel better not being all alone here.”

“It’s probably inappropriate of me, but I’d feel better knowing you weren’t alone here as well,” he accepts.

Daenerys expects to have trouble falling asleep, but she is evidently exhausted. She immediately loses consciousness when her head hits the pillow

She dreams of him. Of course, she dreams of him. 

She is on a boat, the kind you might see in a film with pirates and a fainting heroine. It’s storming: lightening threatening to strike the ship and large swells rocking them as waves crash over the side and flood the deck. Her skirts are heavy and unwieldy. A gust of wind knocks her off balance, throwing her up against the side of the boat, where she clings to the railing with fingers that aren’t strong enough.

But then he’s there wrapping a protective arm around her, sheltering her from the storm, pulling her back from the edge, and guiding her below decks to safety. 

“The others…” she insists, grabbing hold of his soaked white shirt frantically, fingertips brushing his chest hair where it is gaping open. 

“Nothing else will matter if we lose you, my lady,” he insists, all urgency and earnestness. He looks at her like nothing else exists in the whole world. 

“Ser…” she breathes, reaching up to put her hand against his cheek. 

“Promise me you will stay put,” he urges, taking her other hand in his hands and raising it to his lips. 

She catches sight of the tattoo on her wrist, part of a serpentine dragon she’s seen before. Jorah’s lips brush against one of the heads of the dragon on her skin, beard tickling at the same time his mouth warms.

The low light casts deep shadows, calling attention to the sharp lines of his cheek and jaw. There’s so much she wants to tell him, and yet none of it comes forth from her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't wait to hear what you all think about Daenerys' initial reaction to Jorah! The plot is going to get underway properly soon, I promise.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After having only met Daenerys the day before, Jorah already finds his life already increasingly centering around her.

Jorah wakes from a dream that felt more vivid than any he can recall having in the past. It was a self indulgent one, where he played the hero rescuing Daenerys in some nautical period drama, but it felt so real, like he’d truly been there. He can still almost taste the salt in the air, feel it in his nostrils.

He opens his eyes and finds he really is in her guest room, evidently that business with her asshole brother had actually happened at least. 

It’s not quite seven, according to the clock, but he feels surprisingly rested despite how few hours have passed since he went to sleep. 

He does his best to make himself presentable. Daenerys had apologetically offered that she would lend him something of her husband’s, but apparently the man is massive. Jorah’s never thought about himself as a small man, but Drogo is clearly both taller and broader than him, some sort of professional fighter from what he’s gathered. 

Daenerys’ door is closed across the hall, so Jorah guesses she is still sleeping. He’s glad. He saw a vulnerable side of her last night, though she’d held up well enough to Viserys’ face. She could probably use the rest.

Viserys. Just thinking about him causes Jorah to reflexively clench his fists. The way he’d acted towards Daenerys, the things he’d said… Jorah had wanted to hurt him. He’d wanted to hurt him badly, with an intensity he hadn’t felt in a long while. 

He’d come into town, he owns to himself, hoping to capitalize on a possible connection with Daenerys, to rescue his career, but already he finds himself more interested in helping her, in protecting her. It’s hard for him to believe that anyone can be as open and warm and bright as she seems to be, and yet he can’t help feeling as though she is the real thing.

_There’s no reason you can’t do both, Jorah_ , he rationalizes to himself. _If she’s your ticket back into relevance, making sure she’s safe and she succeeds is the smart call._

He puts on the kettle, fixing himself a cup of tea since he knows where everything is, and is midway through drinking it when Daenerys appears in the doorway.

Her hair is a bit wild, clearly still tousled from sleep, and she looks so small and delicate, standing there barefoot in an oversized t-shirt and some shorts that aren’t terribly much longer than the shirt. The sight invites thoughts he should absolutely not be having.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting on me for too long,” she smiles apologetically, pushing her hair back out of her face. 

The movement draws attention to her wrist, to the image only he can see, the one that completes his own. He’s never seen anything like it before, and it is beyond difficult not to stare, to pretend as though he sees nothing.

“Not at all,” he tells her. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“I actually slept surprisingly well,” she tells him. The morning light and her grin make her face seem luminous. “I really appreciate your sticking around, Jorah.”

She fixes coffee and they chat about yesterday’s presentations. 

It’s strangely comfortable, like they have done this domestic routine a hundred times before. _Careful there,_ he reminds himself, knowing better. _She’s fifteen years your junior, married, and hopefully about to be your boss._

The morning’s keynote speaker is insipid. His speech is a jumble of buzz words and smug congratulatory self promotion. It’s probably the worst one Jorah has heard this weekend, and that includes the undergraduate student poster presentations he’d attended yesterday. At least they had some genuine enthusiasm.

He glances over at Daenerys. He can’t not. She meets his eyes and he feels as though they understand one another, though they haven’t exchanged a word. She nods her head to the side and he follows the movement to his cell lying face down in front of him. He flips it over and lo and behold there is a text message from her, from three minutes ago.

_It is probably a good thing we can’t play a drinking game right now. If we drank every time he said preeminent, we’d be under the table in no time._

_Better preeminent than revolutionize._ he responds.

He watches her react: the apples of her cheeks made prominent by the smile that almost seems to take the movement of laughter, the way she bites her lip, the sparkle in her eyes. 

They manage to make it through the session without audibly laughing, but it is a near thing. Jorah wonders if Daenerys is like this with everyone. For him, the openness he feels towards her is unprecedented, but it is likely that Daenerys is simply friendly and outgoing in general. Why shouldn’t she be?

Still he can’t help himself, from indulging in one more small presumption before they part ways, once again going to different breakout sessions.

“I know it’s not my place but…” He can’t not offer, not after last night, not when she’d so clearly wanted someone around. “You told your brother you’d talk to him today, and if you end up doing that and you don’t want to see him alone, I’d be more than willing to just be there.”

“That’s right I did,” she sighs, clearly regretting that promise now. 

“You could always just not,” he offers.

“That would make me as bad as him,” she says, which seems unreasonable to him but it’s clear she believes it. “I feel bad asking more of you.”

“You aren’t asking. I’m offering,” he tells her.

“Dinner’s on me then,” she tells him. “I’ll set up coffee with my brother after today’s last panel. Being in public should make him better behaved.”

Being in public is probably a good thing, for multiple reasons. 

Jorah watches Daenerys walk away, hair done up in some elaborate braids and her small shape made less obvious by wide legged dress pants, heels, and a stiff shouldered blazer. She looks the perfect picture of a calm confident young professional, full of promise and intent. If he hadn’t been there the night before, he wouldn’t know that anything was troubling her. 

None of the other presentations Jorah attends are particularly exemplary, but at least none of them are as bad as the one this morning. He spends the lunch break reading through the revised version of Daenerys’ grant proposal to the Asshai Group and making edit suggestions. He notices he has an email from Varys, which is odd. It’s been made abundantly clear he’s not going to be welcome back, ever, in any way, at King’s Landing University, so why is one of their deans emailing him, especially the PR minded Varys?

The answer, it turns out, is Daenerys. Jorah isn’t sure how Varys already knows that they are talking about working together. Maybe someone from the Asshai Group is his “little bird” or perhaps it is one of Daenerys’ labmates. Whatever the source, Varys does know. He has a proposal for Jorah, one that sounds a bit too good to be true: Jorah is to keep Varys apprised of what Daenerys is up to and in return Varys indicates that he could overlook the impropriety of Jorah’s actions in the past and see to it that Jorah is reinstated to his former position.

People call Varys the Spider. Jorah doesn’t trust him but he also has no doubt, based on the man’s reputation, that he is fully capable of making good on this offer. 

_It’s not like there isn’t someone already spying on her for Varys apparently_ , he justifies to himself. Who knows why Varys even wants this information, though he indicates in his email it is about public perception. _Her father’s name links Daenerys Targaryen to us even if she never steps foot on this campus,_ Varys writes. _Add to that the minor celebrity level of her husband elevating possible media attention on her and it is prudent for the university to be aware of any potential headlines._

Could it really be so simple? Send Varys some updates on Daenerys and get his old life back? Is it possible that the universe is making something that easy this once?

A text message from Daenerys pops up across his screen, letting him know that they are on to meet with Viserys at twenty past four and she will meet him in the lobby at four. Jorah feels a little pang of guilt knowing he’s going to be concealing this arrangement with Varys from her, but he responds to both messages in the affirmative anyway.

He and Daenerys spend the drive to meet with her brother discussing how his approach to looking at the interaction between specific genetic markers and drug reactions might be applied to the work she wants to do with substance use in traditional coming of age ceremonies. 

Jorah can see she’s apprehensive about meeting up with Viserys, but talking about work seems to help focus her, and whatever nerves she’s facing don’t seem to dull her incisive questions and creative thought processes. He considers that she probably doesn’t actually need to bring him on board for the project, considering how fast she’s picking up the nuances of his work. 

“Dany…” Viserys is all smiles for his sister today, kissing her cheek and making a big fuss out of greeting her. 

Jorah notes, however, that it does little to lessen the tension Daenerys has been visibly holding since they got in her car to go meet up with her brother. So he doesn’t relax either.

Viserys is choosing to act as though Jorah is not there, which suits Jorah just fine.

The drinks come out scaldingly hot and both Jorah and Viserys have to set their aside to cool, but not Daenerys who doesn’t seem bothered at all by the temperature. 

“You’re back so early from Lys,” Daenerys comments. “Did you find what you were looking for faster than you expected to then?”

“They didn’t appreciate me there,” Viserys insists, with the air of a man who is trying to convince himself that a breakup was his idea when it was the furthest thing from it. “It’s so hard finding people who have any sort of vision.”

He sounds like a petulant child. Jorah has to intentionally restrain the urge to roll his eyes. He goes to take a sip of his latte, forgetting he was waiting for it to cool, and winces as it scalds his tongue again.

“Viserys is a sociologist,” Daenerys turns to explain to Jorah, though there’s something about the way she says it that makes him feel like she’s being overly diplomatic in her description. 

“When the truth comes out, they are going to regret it,” Viserys vaguely threatens, though it’s not clear who he is threatening or why.

Apparently they aren’t going to talk about the night before, or the fact that he tried to hit her. Jorah supposes at least that means he will be spared hearing some variation of the “if you didn’t make me so angry” excuse. 

Viserys wants something from Daenerys, it is clear, though Jorah isn’t sure initially whether it is money or something else. 

It takes about ten minutes for that question to be answered, when Viserys finally says something that isn’t entirely about himself.

“I don’t suppose you have you heard anything from the Asshai Group about funding?” Viserys says in a way that is clearly intended to sound offhand but is obviously not. “I suppose that since my trip to Lys ended up shortened, I could be persuaded to lend a hand.”

“I wouldn’t want you to wait around on my account,” Daenerys replies, clearly not thrilled by the suggestion but reluctant to say as much to her brother. “You know how slow these things can be.”

“What kind of a big brother would I be, if I wasn’t willing to sacrifice for my baby sister?” Viserys lies or deludes himself.

Jorah is relieved to observe that at least Daenerys doesn’t seen to be getting drawn into his proposal.

It’s about twenty more minutes of Viserys talking incessantly about himself and criticizing other people, before Daenerys insists that Drogo is going to be back tonight and she has to make sure everything is just right for his arrival.

Viserys tenses at Drogo’s name and Jorah surmises that Daenerys’ husband has probably shown less restraint in reacting to his behavior towards her than Jorah did. 

As Viserys hugs his sister goodbye, Jorah notes that he whispers something in her ear that makes her go pale. 

This whole time, Jorah has found he can’t quite relax, noticing Daenerys’ tension, wondering if Viserys is going to lose his composure, and for a moment he thinks it is about to happen, but then Viserys lets them go without further comment.

“What did he threaten you with?” Jorah asks Daenerys, once they are safely back in the car.

“Who says he threatened me?” Daenerys asks, hands gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly.

“Your reaction,” Jorah replies, softly, not wanting her to feel attacked by him as well. “He said something right before we left that got to you.”

“It’s stupid,” she tells him.

“Clearly not to you.”

“You don’t want to wake the dragon,” she swallows, “That’s what he said. That how he used to refer to it, when he’d lose his temper: waking the dragon.”

“By losing his temper, you mean hitting you?” he says bluntly. It’s probably a good thing he didn’t know this back at the coffeeshop or he would likely have lost his composure.

“Amongst other things,” she admits. “I’m not going to let him be involved in our study, in case you are worried about that.”

“I was more worried about your well being than the study,” he tells her. 

“The few times I tried to help him out with getting work it was a disaster. He doesn’t work well with other people and he’s totally unreliable. Also he’s a conspiracy theorist. I didn’t realize how out there his ideas were when I was a kid but now that I’m not. He’s totally out of touch with reality and it’s only gotten worse in recent years.”

She seems determined not to face the elephant in the room, which is that she shouldn’t be engaging with her unstable abusive brother at all. 

“Do you think he will show up again tonight?” he asks.

“I hope not. If he does, he’s likely to regret it. Drogo should be home later, after his fight is over, and he made some threats of his own last time Viserys came around.”

“Sooner or later, you will have to draw some boundaries with your brother,” Jorah can’t help pointing out.

“Can we not talk of it now?” she asks, eyes entreating. “He’s already taken up a great deal of the day.”

“Of course,” he remembers himself. “I’m sorry if I’ve pushed too much. I know it’s not my place to assume.”

“That’s not it,” Daenerys tells him, “Honestly, I feel so at ease with you that it is difficult sometimes to remember that we only just met. It’s like…” she trails off, apparently deciding the better of whatever she was about to say.

“It’s going to sound childish or superstitious but you know deja vu, right? That feeling that you have experienced something before?”

“Sure,” he agrees, “I think everyone does.”

“I think sometimes that my sense of deja vu is stronger than other people’s, especially… well it is like certain people just feel immediately familiar to me.”

He knows exactly what she’s talking about, that sense he’s had many times before but never more strongly than with her.

“Oh?” he says instead of admitting as much. He doesn’t want to scare her off.

“Well, not to sound ridiculous, but you just feel very familiar to me, you have from the moment I saw you in during my presentation yesterday.”

He’s tempted to tell her that he feels the same way, but he remembers Lynesse and keeps the thought to himself.

“Perhaps I just have one of those faces,” he suggests instead. There’s a strange moment where he swears her eye twitches when he says faces but it is gone so quickly that he must have imagined it.

“It know it sounds naive,” she says, “But you know, sometimes stuff that looks like superstition ends up being science we just don’t understand yet. Maybe this is one of those things”

“Maybe,” he says. “I prefer to believe in things I can see with my own eyes… at least with the help of a powerful microscope.”

Daenerys laughs at that, and puts her hand on his forearm as they walk into the restaurant. 

“I know it’s a bit early so I thought we’d grab a drink first,” she suggests. 

“Dany!” the lovely young bartender cries out upon their approach, seeming overjoyed to see her. 

The two women embrace over the bar and Daenerys calls the other woman Doreah.

“And who is this?” Doreah asks.

“Professor Jorah Mormont,” Daenerys introduces him, “A colleague, advisor, and I hope I can say new friend. We’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating?” Doreah asks, “Celebrating what? Drogo’s match isn’t on for another hour.”

“That big grant from Assahi looks like it’s going to come through and Jorah’s agreed to come work with me if it does.”

“Oh,” comprehension of something seems to dawn in Doreah’s eyes. “This is the guy you’ve been talking about, with some sort of DNA math thing I totally don’t understand but you are all excited about.”

Jorah is a bit surprised to hear Daenerys has been talking about him to her bartender, though Doreah seems more like a friend.

She offers to change the TV screen they are facing to the UFC fight, so Daenerys can watch her husband’s match, but Daenerys shakes her head no. 

“You know I hate watching violence,” Daenerys insists. 

“And yet you are married to a man who makes his living from it,” Doreah points out.

“And I maintain my composure and watch when he needs me to,” Daenerys replies, “But he’s not here right now so there’s no need.”

“I suppose knowing he’s going to win takes all the excitement out of it anyway,” Doreah answers.

“Is it such an uneven matchup?” Jorah can’t help asking. 

“Don’t you know?” Doreah smiles, “Drogo always wins. He’s never been beaten in the octagon.”

That is certainly unusual, from what Jorah knows about MMA fighting everyone gets beat sometimes.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Doreah says, fishing her phone out of her pocket and pulling up a video to show Jorah. “They call him the Khal, like those ancient tribal lords.”

Drogo certainly is impressive, as Jorah gets his first sight of Daenerys’ husband. He’s a large man, powerfully built, but it’s clear his deadliness goes beyond that. It’s in his eyes and the posture of his shoulders. It’s in the movements of his limbs, not flashy but quick and devastating.

Jorah can see why Viserys waited until he was sure the man was going to be out of town to show up. 

He’d known like that when he served (a family tradition he’d kept up to please his father: no Mormont was going to shirk that responsibility, though Jorah hadn’t made it into a career like his father had), professionals who didn’t hesitate to inflict violence and pain but whose satisfaction came not from the suffering of others but the knowledge that they had done their job well. 

He hopes he is that type of man, and he certainly prefers to have such a man watching his back over one who seeks violence for its own sake. Men like that, men who take pleasure in cruelty, are unpredictable.

That’s the kind of man Viserys is: unpredictable and sadistic. 

_He needs to be dealt with,_ Jorah thinks. Waiting until he screws up and Daenerys’ husband actually does murder him, hoping it happens before Viserys catches his sister alone, seems an insufficient plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is not the most eventful chapter, but there was some important groundwork I needed to lay down here in order for future chapters to make sense. Hopefully you enjoyed protective Jorah anyway!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drogo, returned from his out of town fight, meets Jorah. Daenerys wrestles with the way her dreams conflict with her real life commitments.

“They were playing this song the first night we met,” she comments, walking away from the record player and back towards where he’s sitting in his accustomed chair.

“How could I forget?” he smiles softly at her, hair slicked back, shirt collar perfectly starched. “I turned to Varys and I said ‘Who is she?’ He, of course, acted as if he had no idea who I was talking about when I said you were the most beautiful woman in all of existence.”

“Jorah…” She shakes her head at the overblown flattery, but she enjoys him saying it nonetheless, despite how corny it is.

He holds out his hand to her and she takes it, letting him draw her to him, his hands encircling her waist as he kisses her just as eagerly as she remembers the first time, like they are two teenagers necking in a car, though Jorah had been a grown man already when she met him.

She’d felt something powerful that first night, that had nothing to do with the danger of the covert mission they had been brought together to undertake. The war had been in full swing, and yet working with Jorah had made her feel more alive than she ever had in peacetime.

He still makes her feel that way. It’s easy to get lost in his mouth, in the feeling of his arms around her.

“The children…” she objects faintly as he pulls her onto his lap, though she doesn’t pull away.

“Are asleep,” he reassures her, one hand sliding up her ribcage, as the other moves downwards, bunching up the skirt of her dress and her crinoline to gain access to her leg.

“Gods I missed you,” she sighs, as his beard tickles her neck, giving up any pretense of resistance as she readjusts herself over his lap, winding her arms around his neck and kissing him with increasing abandon.

“I’m back,” he promises, the hand on her leg moving up her thigh sending warmth through her through the fine material of her stockings, “I’m back now and I am not going anywhere, not unless you force me to.”

“The only place I want you to go is to bed with me,” she whispers into his ear, causing him to arch up from his chair towards her.

“I don’t know if I can make it up those stairs, my back you know,” he half teases, running his finger between the elastic of her garter and her skin, as he continues his upward path.

She’s missed him so much. She needs him so much. His touch makes her feel alive again.

“Oh I think if I went up them you’d find a way,” she teases back, unfastening the top button of his shirt, and then the next one.

“I’ll always find a way back to you,” he promises, fingertips ghosting over her panties.

“You’d better,” she groans, continuing to unbutton his shirt and kissing his newly exposed chest as she works open his belt.

Jorah has always nurtured this wildness within her, a part of herself she thought was shameful until he encouraged it. She’d grown up trying to be well behaved, docile, obedient. But with Jorah she can let that go: can let herself need, let herself want, let herself take. He sees that part of her and embraces it.

He moves the hand not teasing her through the thin fabric of her underwear to the back of her dress, slowly dragging down the zipper. Daenerys knows from her girlfriends that most of their husbands would just leave the dress on if they were too impatient to make it to the bedroom, but Jorah’s never been like that.

“Seven hells, Daenerys!” he groans as her hand makes its way inside of his trousers and underwear to wrap around his arousal.

“I missed this too, you know,” she tells him, an act that would once have made her blush, but they’re long past that.

She has to let go of him for a moment, as he lifts her dress up over her head, taking a moment to stare openly at her, before moving both hands to unhook her stockings from her garter belt.

She drags her red manicured nails down his chest lightly, seeking to tantalize not maim. When she reaches his waistband, he obligingly lifts his hips to let her drag both his pants and underwear down towards his knees.

He pulls her back towards him, moving his hands to her hips as he moves to stand up, lifting her in his arms, kicking his clothes aside as he settles her down in the chair now. Kneeling, wearing only his unbuttoned shirt, he hooks his fingers into her panties and pulls them down her legs.

“I missed this too,” he tells her, caressing her thighs.

The first drag of his tongue between them sends a wave of pleasure washing over her, another way she can’t seem to get enough of him.

She wakes up with her thighs slippery and breath heavy, her whole body throbbing with arousal with the memory of her dream about Jorah.

She feels guilty, of course, but she isn’t sure what she can do. Even if she were to avoid interacting with Jorah, the dreams predate their meeting by many years. There’s no reason to believe they’d stop now if she stopped seeing him.

She looks over at Drogo, asleep beside her, fighting the urge to reach down between her legs and finish what that dream of Jorah has more than started. It wouldn’t take much, she thinks; she’s close. She swallows a frustrated moan as she clenches her fists, refusing to give in to the urge to touch herself and think about him, about just how good his dream mouth had felt. A few moments more of that and she would have orgasmed in her sleep.

_I probably shouldn’t have invited him to Drogo’s party today,_ she thinks, though it is too late now to undo that. Besides, she’s got to get used to having him around, if they are going to be working together so closely. What better way to diffuse whatever energy she’s carrying around Jorah because of these dreams, than to spend time around him with her husband about?

It’s early, but she knows she’s not going to be able to sleep, so Daenerys gets up and takes a shower. When she gets out, Drogo is already gone, probably to the gym to get a workout in before an afternoon of beer drinking to celebrate his latest win.

Halfway through her breakfast, Daenerys remembers the notes from her father’s class that Jorah gave her two nights before, and she has left in the backseat of her car since then, forgotten in the rush to deal with Viserys. She’d better retrieve them, she thinks, before they get damaged or scrambled. It’s a simple enough matter to retrieve them, and Daenerys decides to take some of her extra time this morning looking over them.

Jorah’s handwriting is slanted yet legible and welcoming, pleasing enough to read. The premise being suggested in the lecture the first set of notes are from is a bit wild: the idea that humanity can control and accelerate its own evolution via the use of chemical compounds, ingested or injected. Daenerys chooses another page, scanning through, and sees that her father had apparently been very fixated on this idea.

She’s about to put the whole thing away, wondering once again if her father was like Viserys, when she notices some of the chemical formulas that Jorah had jotted down. They look incredibly familiar.

Daenerys pulls out her laptop and opens a copy of her dissertation, using the find function to locate where the same exact compound appears in her own work. She goes back to the first set of notes she had set aside and discovers that one has components which are also explored in her work. It’s a bizarre coincidence. She can’t help wondering if it is more than that somehow, though she has no idea how it could be.

She sets aside the notes and the question, returning to the bedroom to get dressed instead. She puts on a blue sundress, throwing a tan cardigan over it to make it more professional. She likely won’t have time to change between the last half day of the conference and when everyone is showing up for the party, so the outfit is a compromise.

It turns out to be a good precaution. By the time she gets home, cars are already lining the street multiple blocks from the house. Everyone from the gym is there, though mostly people are out back where Drogo has the grill going.

She doesn’t make it that far, before being waylaid by Irri and Jhiqui, girlfriends of some of Drogo’s friends. Despite their obvious differences, Daenerys has become friendly with the two of them.

“Shots!” Irri insists, dragging Daenerys towards the kitchen. “Shots for the Khaleesi!”

“It’s barely past noon,” Daenerys points out.

“It’s bad luck to refuse shots celebrating your husband’s victory,” Jhiqui insists. “It is known.”

“It is known,” Irri agrees, and Daenerys sighs and goes along with it. It is better to be less than sober at these parties anyway.

What she fails to think about, is the kind of state she will be in when Jorah shows up.

That state ends up being well passed buzzed and into tipsy. She catches sight of him, as he walks in, and is slightly too slow in remembering not to stare. He’s wearing fitted jeans again, this time with a blue v-necked t-shirt that matches his eyes, compliments his skin, and clings in all the right ways to draw attention to the fact that he clearly finds time to spend at the gym.

“Jorah,” she smiles and waves him over.

“That is your professor friend?” Jhiqui asks, sounding a bit surprised. “From Westeros?”

“Yes,” Daenerys confirms.

“Why do all Westerosi look like they are faded from being left out too long in the sun? Westeros is cold, no?” Irri asks. “No offense, Dany.”

“None taken,” Daenerys assures her, “Perhaps we are underbaked.”

“Unburnt,” Jhiqui suggests with a tone of appreciation, gaze still fixed on Jorah who is rapidly approaching.

“This is Professor Jorah Mormont, a colleague and friend. Jorah, meet my friends Jhiqui and Irri. Both of their boyfriends train with Drogo.”

“A pleasure, ladies,” Jorah smiles, warm and genteel.

A loud sound from the driveway, draws all of their attention outside. Daenerys runs out to find Viserys, who has slammed his car into a row of bushes.

“What are you doing here?” she demands, walking over towards where he has stumbled out of the vehicle.

“No warm welcome for your beloved brother?” he remarks.

“You shouldn’t be here, Viserys,” she tells him. “Drogo will be out here any moment and he will hurt you.”

“You like that, don’t you?” Viserys taunts, knocking her drink out of her hand. It hits the ground and splatters all over both of them, but Daenerys refuses to flinch. “Being hurt. Having some brute throw you around like the-”

Daenerys doesn’t even realize that Jorah is approaching before he has Viserys pinned against car.

“She told you to leave,” he almost growls.

“Let go of me, asshole. Dany, call off your attack dog.”

“Why?” she says. Perhaps the alcohol is making her brave. “So you can hit me and insult me? No. I’m done letting you bully me, brother. The next time you show up like this I’m filing a restraining order.”

“I’ll make sure he gets out of here, Jorah offers, picking up Viserys’s dropped keys and pushing him into the passenger side of his car.

“I have no fucking idea who this guy is, but I like him.” Drogo’s voice surprises Daenerys even more than Jorah’s approach did. She wonders how much of that little scene he witnessed, as she turns to find him standing in the doorway, the rest of the party crammed in behind him.

“Jorah is that colleague I mentioned was visiting from Westeros, my sun and stars,” Daenerys tells her husband, feeling herself flush a little under his gaze, knowing that her thoughts about Jorah are at times a betrayal to her marriage. “Jorah, this is my husband, Drogo.”

Drogo wraps one arm around Daenerys, and holds the other out to Jorah.

The two exchange a very manly handshake, and Daenerys watches something flit across Jorah’s face that she can’t identify. It isn’t intimidation, though many men are intimidated by her husband. Whatever it is, he banishes it quickly.

“Can the three of you just cut to the chase and have a threesome? Get it over with already,” Viserys interjects, before Jorah slams the door shut, cutting him off.

“Thank you, Jorah,” Daenerys says. “Yes. Please make sure my brother gets home. And then return, okay?”

“I will,” Jorah agrees, nodding, and then moving around Viserys’ car to get in. Daenerys watches him drive her brother away, confident and capable.

“No one would miss him, if he disappeared forever,” Drogo tells her, clearly talking about Viserys.

“I would,” she says, though she’s not entirely sure that’s true. She’s never sure how serious Drogo is about this, but she sort of feels like he does mean it, like he really would murder her brother. She’s never sure how to feel about that either.

“Khaleesi,” Irri rushes up to her, “Your dress!”

Looking down, she notices the bright stains left behind by her drink when it fell. She lets Irri and Jhiqui usher her inside towards her bedroom to change.

Irri takes her discarded dress to the bathroom sink to try to scrub the stains out, while Jhiqui looks through her closet.

“This one,” Jhiqui decides, pulling a short little red cocktail dress out. “Much better than that sad schoolteacher one you were wearing anyway.”

Daenerys thinks it is a bit much, but Irri agrees with Jhiqui and it feels like too much work to argue with both of them. They insist on taking her hair down from the bun she had it pulled up in as well.

The truth is that it feels nice, having people care for her this way, take care of her and praise her without expectation of some sort of reward. Jhiqui and Irri aren’t particularly elegant or educated, but they are kind women who actually seem to like her.

When they are done, Daenerys finds Jorah has returned and is out on the patio with Drogo, beer in hand, apparently just as at ease with this crowd as he was with her coworkers. Jorah stares at her for a moment, before glancing away guiltily, but she can hardly blame him when she is wearing this ridiculous dress that barely covers her ass and ridiculously tall platform sandals.

Drogo makes no attempt to hide his stare. Her husband isn’t a shy man about anything.

“People ask me: Drogo, why get married?” he announces loudly, to the crows at large. “Why let one girl tie you down when there are countless who are flinging themselves at you? Surely, they say, you aren’t actually being faithful. But look at her, everyone. My wife. The sexiest thing out there and she belongs to me. Who the fuck wants to eat scraps when you can have a steak dinner whenever you want.”

It embarasses her a little, him saying this in front of people, especially Jorah, but Daenerys also knows Drogo is a man without pretense, and this is his way of saying he loves her. It’s a little crude, but it is real.

Still, she can’t help wondering what Jorah must think: of her, of Drogo. He didn’t move at Drogo’s little speech, not in any way that could be measured, and yet she’d felt the tension coil within him, not exactly the way it had when they’d been with Viserys yesterday, but just as noticeably to her at least.

Someone hands her a drink, and Daenerys moves over towards Drogo and Jorah.

“Who knew that you weren’t the only person with a PhD who isn’t a total bore,” Drogo comments, draping an arm over Dany and pulling her against him.

“Me?” she suggests, watching Jorah’s eyes as they follow Drogo’s arm from his shoulder to where it ends, with his hand on hers.

“You should move out here, Mormont. Who wants to be in Westeros with all that snow?”

“You get used to it,” Jorah replies, not arguing with Drogo or agreeing with him.

“He is, at least for a while,” Daenerys reminds Drogo, a little worried that he has already forgotten their conversation of less than 24 hours ago. “Remember I told you, he’s agreed to help me with that big project.”

“Awesome, man,” Drogo bumps his fist into Jorah’s shoulder. “I like the idea of you being around when I’m not. Dany’s shitstain brother likes to show up like that and she’s too nice to call the cops on him.”

“I’ve noticed,” Jorah replies dryly.

“You know. You should really stay with us while you are getting settled here,” Drogo tells him with a clap on the back.

Daenerys nearly chokes on her drink. Her eyes meet Jorah’s and she feels that he’s just as startled as she is

“I wouldn’t presume-” Jorah starts. He’s talking to Drogo, and yet Daenerys feels as though he is entirely focused on her.

“Bullshit,” Drogo interrupts. “We have the room and besides, it would be like having a free bodyguard for my wife when I am out of town. Think about it as doing me a favor.”

It is a terrible idea, but there is no way for her to tell Drogo that, without revealing things that she doesn’t want to tell either of them. What excuse could she give: sorry honey, that colleague you are being so nice to is someone I dream about fucking… worse yet about being in love with.

“Drogo makes a good point,” she concedes, feeling that the sooner this conversation is over, the better it will be for both her and Jorah, “Besides, we are going to be in the field so much of the time… renting a place would really be a waste.”

She’s convinced it’s an awful decision that is going to lead to disaster, or at least a great deal of awkwardness, but how could Drogo know that. Besides, she supposes she should be grateful that he doesn’t seem suspicious about her and Jorah. Though, why would he? Drogo has never been an insecure man. No. Everything has always gone his way, and he expects that to continue.

The conversation turns to other topics. Drogo and Jorah talk about different fighting styles. It turns out that Jorah was in the military before going to university.

It’s many hours later, when Jorah finally departs, citing an early flight back to Westeros in the morning.

“Thank you for coming,” she tells him, too drunk to realize that she probably shouldn’t hug him goodbye before she does it.

She pulls back, feeling flushed, the scent of him in her nostrils, and is faced with his intense blue eyes.

“Thank you for inviting me… Khaleesi?” he smiles slightly, a little mischief in those eyes as he says it. “That’s what your friends call you, right?”

“That’s not…” she stammmers, “It’s just a stupid nickname the girls came up with because people call Drogo ‘the Khal’.”

“And yet it suits you, not because of your husband, but because you are regal in of yourself.”

And with that he departs, leaving her standing in the entryway, blushing, both pleased and a little embarrassed.

Daenerys excuses herself shortly afterwards and goes to bed, though not all of their guests have left, exhausted and more than a little intoxicated.

She dreams about Jorah, drenched in blood and wearing armor, cutting through swaths of foes to reach her. He holds out his hand and she takes it.

She dreams his kisses taste like salt and iron, from the sweat and blood that has run down his face, but she doesn’t care. He presses her against the wall, arms behind her to shield her from the impact, both of them still breathing heavily after their close brush with death.

“I need you…” she murmurs raking her hands through his hair and moaning as he kisses her neck. “Now.”

Her hands move to his belt, letting his sword go clanging to the ground in its scabbard and attacking the laces to his breeches with a ferocity that almost matches that he had shown on the battlefield in his mad dash to reach her.

His hands move up under her dress, sliding her undergarments from her and lifting her up at the same time he does the skirt of her dress. She feels alive in his arms, so alive.

She wraps her legs around him as he pushes into her, calling out his name, urging him to go faster. In his eyes, she can see his feelings written clearly, his fear and hope and most of all his love.

“I can’t lose you,” she tells him, “I can never lose you.”

With his armor on like this, and her dress merely bunched up around her waist instead of removed, they can’t get as close as she’d like, as close as she needs him. In this moment, though, it is more important to have him now, than to wait for him to remove it.

Their hands meet as they both reach down to stroke her clit at the same moment, and she catches sight of their soulmarks, the dragon complete as she takes his hand in hers and guides it to exactly the rhythm she needs it.

She awakes to her legs being spread apart; Drogo has come to bed at last.

“Missed me, I see” he assumes, as he moves to open her up with his fingers and finds her soaking wet. Daenerys doesn’t correct him. She certainly isn’t going to tell him she was in the middle of a sex dream about someone else.

She closes her eyes as Drogo slides into her and can’t help imagining Jorah behind her instead, the look that would be on his face as he fucked her down into the bed making her cry out with every powerful thrust, as she grinds her clit against the mattress.

Drogo pulls her hips up with both hands, bringing her onto her knees, and she remembers the feeling of Jorah’s hands in her dream, protecting her from the impact of his movements and moving down to touch her aching clit.

She can almost feel Jorah’s mouth there, making her shake and moan at the same time that Drogo fills her. As she pushes up onto her elbows, arching her body against Drogo’s thrusts, she imagines Jorah holding her breasts, thumbs caressing her nipples at the same time he protects them from jostling.

She imagines Jorah, kissing her spine as he grinds the heel of his hand against her pelvic mound, his thrusts strong but deliberate. Harder, she imagines urging him. He knows exactly what she needs and he gives it to her, finding that perfect angle and then returning just there every time he pushes back into her.

She loses herself in the waking dream, feeling the phantom touch of hands that exist only in her mind.

It isn’t until after it’s already finished, and she’s lying there with Drogo leaking down her thighs, that she has the clarity to feel ashamed.

“Other men have wives who complain, who aren’t in the mood, but you are always in the mood, baby. I love that about you.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that, not after what she's just done. Fortunately, Drogo doesn’t seem to need one, as he rolls over and promptly begins snoring.

Her fervor has cooled a bit; the haziness of sleep has forsaken her. The reality of the situation hits her, and she knows that she should be thinking about Drogo, but she finds her mind turning back to Jorah… and isn’t that the entire problem?

She can’t help wondering what he would think if he knew. Would he lose whatever respect he has for her? _I had a dream_ is hardly a real defense. And yet, sometimes when he looks at her, she has to wonder if he feels it as well.

Earlier, he’d definitely been staring when she first changed into that red dress, and there was something about the intensity in Jorah’s eyes every time Drogo put his hands on her in front of him something that makes her think that perhaps the thoughts she has running wild aren’t entirely one sided.

_It doesn’t matter,_ she insists to herself. But it doesn’t sound true, even in her own mind.

_It’s not real_ , she tries instead.

Surely it wouldn’t be like it is in her dreams in reality. Those dreams are part of her inner psyche, not the reality of a real man. Surely, even if she were to sleep with Jorah, it couldn’t be like what her imagination has conjured up about what it would be like.

Not that she will, of course. It is one thing to let one’s mind wander, but another to let one’s body do so. She won’t. Of course she won’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me closer to two weeks to get this chapter up. I ended up doing more traveling than I had planned and the driving really ate into my writing time!
> 
> Thank you to [clarasimone](https://clarasimone.tumblr.com/) for the last minute betaing on this chapter! Without her, it might not have gotten finished today, and it certainly would be not as good of a chapter.
> 
> Don't hate me for the Dany/Drogo content (such as it is). 
> 
> Can't wait to hear what you all think!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the surface, Daenerys and Jorah's project is starting out well and Jorah has gotten settled staying at her and Drogo's home. Under the surface, neither thing is as simple as it seems.

Jorah awakens with a start, heart pound with the intensity of the dream he’d been having. Not a good dream, this one, though Daenerys had been it is, as she so often seems to be since he’s relocated to Essos. How could she not be, he has to face, what with them spending pretty much all their time together: between work and the fact that he was staying in her and Drogo’s home? 

He’s not sure whether this dream’s agonizing nature is an improvement over some of the others, one’s he feels guilty about, or something worse.

In the dream, she’d sent him away, angry at him for a betrayal he couldn’t seem to explain to her satisfaction, no matter how much it broke his heart. He didn’t blame her. He blamed himself and others, but never her. In the dream, he’d thought he’d rather she’d executed him than exiled him. Her dream self could do that, he’d known, just as she had the power to banish him, not just from her life but from her land. But she hadn’t.

He sits up, sweaty and ill at ease, sliding on a pair of sweatpants to pad out into the kitchen for some water. 

He almost collides with Daenerys in the dark hallway. She flinches uncharacteristically at his hand on her upper arm, as if she knows whatever it is that dream version of her was so angry about.

“You startled me,” she half whispers, but there’s something in her eyes in the low light that seems hesitant, hurt.

“I was just headed to the kitchen for some water. I woke up parched,” he half explains in a low tone.

“I woke up suddenly, too.” She nods, indicating with her head that they should head in that direction. “... bad dream,” she adds looking away, and not for the first time he wonders if they really are sharing dreams, though that’s a thought he can’t afford to entertain. 

“Let me make you some tea,” he suggests, feeling strangely hesitant, as if she might banish him for such a suggestion. “You can tell me about it.”

“Yes to the tea,” she agrees, “But I’d just as soon not relieve that dream.”

“Suit yourself, Khaleesi,” he tells her, but the nickname fails to bring the usual smile to her face.

“Funny us both waking up at the same time,” she comments, seating herself as he moves around the kitchen preparing the promised tea, though the truth is that this is not the first time they’ve run into each other in the middle of the night like this.

He almost wants to tell her that he had a bad dream as well, but then she’d ask him about it, and that wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do any more than it would to tell her about those other dreams, the ones where he holds her in his arms and makes love to her in every way there is to love a woman.

He does his best to focus on rearranging the mugs, but he can’t help glancing over at her, her hair shimmering silver in the moonlight, her skin luminous and mostly exposed by the silk robe she is wearing. Of course she didn’t intend for him to see her like this, but he can’t help noticing half of one thigh is exposed by the way her robe has fallen and just how clearly he can see the shape of her breasts through the thin material. 

He drags his eyes away, annoyed at himself for inwardly behaving like a boy less than half his age. Daenerys deserves better than him ogling her. _She deserves better than Drogo,_ a stubborn voice insists on adding to his thoughts. 

Jorah gets along just fine with Drogo, who has been generous with his home and nothing but friendly towards Jorah. Still, Drogo’s possessive way of grabbing Daenerys, his carelessness with her, they bother Jorah, though he knows it is not his place, not when Daenerys doesn’t seem to mind. He believes the man cares for her in his way. He’s heard Drogo’s friends tease him about his fidelity when there aren’t any women around to hear. But the truth remains that Drogo is in no way worthy of Daenerys. Yes, he’s an impressive physical specimen, but the man is no great intellect, and Daenerys is. She deserves someone who can appreciate that, who can be on her level, or at least close enough to recognize it. She deserves to be cherished and lavished with tenderness, not manhandled. 

She deserves more. _More than you_ , he tells himself. Middle aged, broke (though slightly less so suddenly with the generous rate she is paying him and the almost nonexistent living expenses since he’s staying here), disgraced. 

He finishes preparing the tea, chamomile for him and peppermint for her (chamomile he knows turns her stomach), and brings it over, leaning across the table to place her mug in front of her.

He looks up from the tabletop and catches something in her eyes he doesn’t want to misinterpret, as he can almost swear they make their way over his bare chest and shoulders and down all the way below the waistband on his pants. He must be imagining that, he tells himself.

She blinks suddenly, and then looks down at her tea intently.

“Since we’re both awake, I suppose we could talk about how the cultural anthropological lit review is going,” she suggests suddenly, looking up with a smile that feels more determined than honest.

“I read the update that Missandei sent out yesterday,” he agrees. “It’s good, really good. You did well poaching her from that horrid little man.”

“He deserved to have his grants pulled,” Daenerys insists, though Jorah hasn’t suggested to her that the man hadn’t.

_What would she think, if she knew the truth about my history?_ he can’t help wondering. Jorah hadn’t treated his research assistants the way that man had, but he has spent enough time with Daenerys to know she would never condone the way he’d let corporate funding influence his research. He’d been so worried about trying to make Lynesse happy with presents and vacations, that he hadn’t stopped to worry about how he was risking his professional reputation a second time being their shill. And the other thing, how was he to know what his clients planned to do with the work he did for them?

“So, what do you think about Missandei’s findings on the original purposes of these rituals?” he asks, pulling himself away from those thoughts. 

Part of him thinks the mythology might appeal to Daenerys. Though she’s a disciplined scientist, he’s noticed moments where mysticism and superstition seem to entice her, like that conversation they had about deja vu. 

“Soulmates?” she asks, though she knows they have both read the initial report. “It’s rather romantic isn’t it?”

“Or does it rather take the romance out of it?” he suggests, more for the sake of conversation than out of any sort of investment. “I mean if some chemically induced state tells you who you are supposed to be with, doesn’t that take the whole adventure of falling in love away?”

Romance. Love. Probably not appropriate topics for them to be discussing, though thankfully Daenerys doesn’t seem as aware of that any more than she seems aware of just how far up her thigh her robe has slipped.

“I guess that depends on what was really going on,” she replies. “I mean, maybe it was all psychosomatic. You get high and your inhibitions are lowered, and with the cultural narrative supporting you, that manifests in some sort of visualization of what’s in your psyche… in your heart.”

“Maybe,” he answers skeptically, “But what if that person you think is your soulmate doesn’t think the same?”

He doubts that’s a problem Daenerys has had to face, with the way she looks, but also with the presence she has. What man could help wanting to be Daenerys’? He sees it everywhere they go. 

“There’s always the possibility that there is a biological answer, some sort of pheromone or genetic resonance that really exists between people and the drug state helped primitive people identify without the help of technology.”

Her suggestion is intriguing, the idea that there could be some hard science to compatibility. Too intriguing, perhaps. Jorah has learned that things which seem too good to be true usually are.

“So, if this system worked so well… why would any of these cultures have given them up?” he asks.

“Well, not all of them have, exactly. I’ve been in communication with a tribe in Asshai that Melisandre suggested, who apparently still do this kind of ritual. We might actually be able to see it in practice.”

Her eyes light up at the idea, and Jorah is reminded that her discipline is different from his own, that for her it isn’t just about the data and what you can do with it, but also about what it already implies.

“Fascinating, but still, that’s hardly the trend,” he points out, “It’s hard enough for me to fathom that soulmates might be real, let alone that people had a way to identify them and instead of that spreading it shrank down. But what do I know? I’m just the biochemist. I’ll leave it to the biological anthropologist to figure out. ” He smiles as he says that last bit. Daenerys is more than capable of doing her part of the research, even if she asks him his opinion on it.

“It’s a good question.” She reaches out and touches his forearm with her hand. “I’ll make sure Missandei looks into it.”

For a moment they look at each other silently, and Jorah wonders just how nakedly his feelings for her are visible. She doesn’t draw back, though, and neither does he. He can’t help imagining what it would feel like to brush his thumb across her lips, how soft they would be. The predawn light is starting to stream through the window behind her, making her robe almost translucent, or maybe that’s his imagination.

“We should both try to get some sleep,” he says with a hard swallow, looking away at last. “We have those samples from Mereen coming in and we should both be sharp for the initial scans.”

“You always look after me, Jorah,”Daenerys smiles as she stands to go, and lo and behold it was not his imagination after all. He can see far more than he ought to be able to through that robe.

It is such a strange experience, how he’s seen her naked in his dreams and in his dreams he would reach out and untie that robe, let it fall open as he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her soundly, feeling her skin on his. In his dreams he is so often allowed. It feels as real as his waking hours sometimes. And yet, in reality, this veiled view of the outline of her nipples through silk is a trespass.

Waiting until he hears the sound of her bedroom door close, Jorah rises, adjusting himself, and returns to his cold bed. 

He tries not to think about Daenerys’ body as he lies there, about how it would have felt to touch her through that silk, about kissing her breasts through the thin resistance of it, about licking her nipples through it until the fabric was soaked through and he could see them perfectly peaked and eager as he sucked lightly, still leaving that barrier to tease until she pulled it aside herself and drew his head back to her breast. 

It takes him much longer to fall asleep than he would like.

He stares up at her from his position, head rested securely in her lap as the rest of him sprawls off the picnic blanket and onto the grass. The sunlight filtering through her parasol gives the impression of a halo around her head. 

“You’re supposed to be reading to me,” Daenerys reminds him, with a soft indulgence smile.

“My apologies,” he grins, feeling the warmth of the afternoon but also of being with her. “Sometimes it is impossible to keep my eyes off of you.”

“I suppose I could read to myself,” she says, “though I enjoy it so much more hearing you do it. Your voice brings me comfort”

“Then I will endeavour to refocus my attention,” he promises, returning his eyes to the book’s pages, as he holds it resting against his chest.

As he begins to read, Daenerys rewards him by softly stroking his hair. He thinks to himself that this is bliss, to lay with his head upon her lap and have her smile at him and rest her hand upon his brow. He’d thought his injury would further condemn him to be beyond her consideration, but his convalescence has brought them closer together than he’d ever imagined possible.

He awakes for the second time, relaxed and refreshed, pleasantly surprised to recall that his second dream had been neither a nightmare nor explicitly erotic. He’d rather anticipated the latter, given his mindset beforehand, but of late if feels as though his dreams have little relation to his thoughts or mood upon falling asleep. 

Jorah hears the sound of the shower being turned on through the wall. When he makes his way to the kitchen, he finds Drogo there, so it must be Daenerys in the shower, which he endeavours not to think about. 

“The boys want to know when you are going to come spar with us again,” Drogo tells him, repeating information he’d shared just last night. 

It seems to be happening a lot these days, even when they aren’t drinking: Drogo forgetting about conversations he’s already had. Jorah would mention it if he didn’t think Drogo would be offended, if he hadn’t overheard Drogo and Daenerys arguing about Daenerys’ pressing him to go check in with a physician. 

_They’re all scam artists, Dany, _Drogo had insisted, _They just want to convince you there’s a problem so you feel like you need them.___

__Jorah knows better than to say anything to Daenerys either. Why worry her when there’s nothing she can do, if it even really is what he suspects?_ _

__Daenerys joins them far more quickly than he would have expected, given the sound of the shower, but then her hair is still dry so perhaps that’s why. She looks a little paler than usual, he notes._ _

___She’s not getting enough rest_ , he thinks to himself, _or downtime._ He wonders what is waking her up at night. The project is going rather well so far, the initial samples confirming the links they’d predicted. Is she worrying about Drogo? As far as he knows she hasn’t heard form Viserys of late._ _

__“You really ought to have something more sustaining than that,” he can’t help suggesting, as Daenerys sits down with only dry toast on her plate._ _

__“Later,” she puts him off._ _

__He makes a mental note to make sure they take a real lunch break today, as they all eat (or don’t) in relative silence._ _

__He thinks about his overdue report back to Varys, how the Spider asked him recently about Daenerys’ emotional state. What a patriarchal question to ask, he’d think, one no one would ask about a man. Except, he sort of believes that isn’t exactly true in this case, that a man is exactly the reason this question is being asked about Daenerys, or rather two men: her father and her brother._ _

___She’s fine, _he tells himself. There’s none of either Aerys or Viserys’ feverish intensity and paranoia evident in Daenerys.__ _ _

____“I’ve been comparing the chemical formulas from my father’s lectures against our initial samples,” she tells him in the car on the way to the lab, and he wonders if perhaps that’s what’s keeping her awake._ _ _ _

____“You know, we can never document where you got those formulas from, right?” he asks, worried he’s done more harm than good in giving those to her._ _ _ _

____“Yes,” she tells him, sighing in frustration, “You made that perfectly clear.”_ _ _ _

____When she’d first come to him with her theory, he’d been worried enough to find himself compelled to tell her at least a sliver of the truth, that whatever Aerys had been working on had been controversial._ _ _ _

_____You think someone killed him over it,_ she’d grasped, _that his death really might not have been an accident.__ _ _ _

_____It’s possible,_ he’d hedged. _The way all the data just disappeared is suspicious and there’s this feeling you get whenever someone brings him up, like it is some sort of state secret__ _ _ _

_____You sound like Viserys,_ she’d told him. _He’s always been convinced there was a conspiracy against our father.__ _ _ _

_____I don’t know that I’d use the word conspiracy, _he’d backtracked. _I am pretty sure there is something, though. Something that the school, at least, would like kept quiet.___ _ _ _ _

______“I just don’t want you to get dragged into something unnecessarily, and blindly. If we figure out what really happened, then we can measure the risks,” he tells her now, glancing across the car._ _ _ _ _ _

______“It’s a shame none of my father’s co investigators from that project are still around,” she bemoans. “Though I suppose you are going to tell me that’s not a coincidence either.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“That may be less of a conspiracy,” Jorah suggests, worrying he’s made the mystery of her father’s missing research too alluring. “Your father was notoriously challenging to work with.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Surely there has to be someone,” she insists, “a graduate student or something.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“It would be easier to ascertain if there were any records left.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“There has to be something, surely the school has some sort of records of who he was advising at the time.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“The story is that power surge wiped it all out,” Jorah replies, “But I can’t imagine they actually got rid of that information willy nilly. There are people who could probably access those ‘lost’ files, but I’m not sure how we could get them to assist us without unduly tipping our hand.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Varys, he thinks, but he can’t risk it. Petyr Baelish, the school’s CBO, is known for trading in that kind of information, but he’s even less predictable than Varys from what Jorah knows about him._ _ _ _ _ _

______“There’s got to be another way. Somebody has to remember something.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“I wish I could help more,” he ruffles his hair with his hand, looking downwards. “It was so long ago, and I have to be honest I was hungover more often than not when I went into the lab. I don’t even remember what any of them looked like, let alone a name.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______The modest stipend and the extra credit for her father’s course had been enough to motivate him to sign up as a test subject. It had not been enough to make him terribly interested in the proceedings._ _ _ _ _ _

______“So I take it none of the researchers was a pretty girl then,” she teases him, a smile gracing her face, as she seems to realize she’s inadvertently guilt tripped him about not having useful information._ _ _ _ _ _

______He’s saved from having to answer that, by their arrival on campus. They’ve agreed not to talk about the matter here._ _ _ _ _ _

______Still, he wonders why she chose that comment to attempt levity with. It’s not as if he’s turning his head at countless ripe young undergraduates walking by. For all that he’s sure that’s how some people imagine him: more interested in a pretty young face than anything else, it’s not true, not the way they think, and he is suddenly paranoid about what someone might have convinced Daenerys about him, what she might have heard._ _ _ _ _ _

______He wants to correct the misapprehension, but he doesn’t know how to, not without bringing up Lynesse, and he doesn’t want to do that, especially when he’s not sure Daenerys knows about that whole situation. He wants her to understand, but he doesn’t want her to know. It’s an impossible paradox._ _ _ _ _ _

_______Yes,_ he imagines admitting, _I have made a lot of rash and foolish decisions for a beautiful woman, but not just any woman. I thought she was different. I thought she loved me. I thought it was something it was never going to be, and I promise I’m not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice. You aren’t Lynesse, but by the gods you are even more out of my reach than she ever was and this time I am not in denial about it.__ _ _ _ _ _

______“Jorah?” she asks, pulling him back from his reverie, “Why the scowl? You know I’m only teasing.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“I was merely contemplating the matter we’ve been discussing,” he lies. He can never tell her. He can only pray she never asks._ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the slower than I hoped update. Being sick really set me back in every aspect of life this last week! I hoped you all enjoyed this chapter, and the beginnings of starting to move forward with the research/mystery plot line. Can't wait to hear what you all think!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys is called down to the morgue to identify a body.

“Daenerys?” the velvet rumble of Jorah calling her name brings Daenerys back to the present moment, standing in the doorway, trying fruitlessly jam put her car key in the front door so she can lock it.

She drops the whole ring in surprise. Her eyes meet his as he kneels down at the same time she does to retrieve them. She takes in the sight of him, sweat drenched and pink faced, from the run he evidently had been on. That’s why he hadn’t been in the house when she’d called out. He hadn’t been lying dead on a cold morgue table. 

She feels relief wash over her, “Oh thank the gods!” she exclaims, throwing her arms around his neck, breathing him in, sweat and shampoo and whatever else it is that makes up the scent of Jorah. 

“What’s going on?” he questions, clearly and understandably taken aback by her reaction.

“The morgue called,” she tries to explain. “They said they wanted me to come down to identify a body and then you weren’t in the house and I don’t know… I just thought maybe…”

Of course, if it isn’t Jorah they were calling about that probably means… Daenerys feels guilty when she realizes that in her joy at seeing Jorah alive she’s forgotten for a moment that if Jorah is fine that in all likelihood means-

“A body?” Jorah’s eyes fill with concern. “They didn’t say whose?”

“If they did, I was too overwhelmed to register it. I mean… if you are here then-”

Drogo. It has to be Drogo. 

“You never know who has you as their emergency contact,” Jorah tells her, but he doesn’t sound entirely optimistic. “Here, give me your keys. You’re in no condition to drive.”

She is in no mood to argue the point, as she lets Jorah help her up and guide her into the passenger seat of her car. He seems to understand her need for silence on the drive, though he keeps glancing over at her with concern. 

What could have happened that Drogo has ended up directly at the morgue, rather than a hospital, Perhaps, a car crash? He’s been off lately; Daenerys has been able to see it plainly, slurring his words and forgetting things regularly. She should have pushed harder for him to go see a doctor, for him to take a break from training and let himself recover. He’s stubborn, she knows that, but she could have kept trying.

“Pull over,” she tells Jorah, who does with a look of worry, not a moment too soon. Bolting out of the car, Daenerys finds herself rapidly emptying whatever had been left in her stomach after earlier this morning’s race to the bathroom. 

“Here,” Jorah says, offering her a paper fast food napkin, probably retrieved from her center console, to wipe her mouth with and his half full water canteen, as he kneels down just behind her.

“You don’t have to…” she tries to say, embarrassed for him to see her like this, as much as the offerings are welcome.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells her, in response to her unasked question. 

“Have you had to do this?” she asks, “Identify a body of someone you… you know.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “I’ve seen corpses, but it’s different in the heat of action than like this I think.”

She feels like there’s something more he’s not telling her, but between her body and her mind she’s too off balance to press, and simply lets him guide her back into the passenger seat to continue their drive.

Her mind rabbits around everywhere at once: financial considerations she hasn’t had reason to consider, logistics like how to deal with things like funeral arrangements and all the account passwords she doesn’t know. Drogo’s rare laughter. The warmth of his hand on her waist. Maybe they are mistaken, she thinks. They could have the wrong body.

“Your husband can come with you,” the woman at the front desk says.

“He’s not my husband…” Daenerys corrects, “My husband is-”

Evidently she hasn’t read the file, the one that says Daenerys’ husband is most likely lying dead on a metal table somewhere in this building.

“Your father then?” the woman ventures, apologetically, which they both wince at.

“A friend,” Daenerys clarifies. “I’d still like him to accompany me, if that’s alright.”

“Of course. Right this way.”

Daenerys is grateful for Jorah’s steady presence beside her.

“They warned you over the phone about the condition the body is in, didn’t they?” the medical examiner doesn’t exactly ask, before he uncovers the body.

“What exactly happened?” Jorah asks for her, for which she is grateful, as she isn’t sure she could speak with any sort of coherency, feeling weak and frozen in place.

“The police detective will explain it in more detail when we are done here,” the man replies, “but the discoloration you are going to see if the result of axfixiation… well that and the time that passed before anyone found the body.”

Time that passed? Daenerys saw Drogo just yesterday morning. She doesn’t have time to think any further on that though, not before the medical examiner pulls back the sheet.

It’s not Drogo. Even with the swollen dark bruising, it would be impossible to mistake the delicate features of her brother Viserys for anyone else, let alone her husband. _Don’t cry out,_ she orders herself. _You mustn’t swoon like some damsel from a romance novel. You are the last Targaryen. Your family line dates back for thousands of years and you will not disgrace that memory._

“Cover him back up,” Jorah tells the man, “Can’t you see how seeing him is distressing her?”

“No,” she manages, grateful that there’s nothing in her stomach left to throw up. “I need to look.”

_Oh Viserys…_ she thinks, _What did you get yourself into this time? Why didn’t you come to me for help?_ She wouldn’t have turned him away, no matter what Drogo and Jorah thought she should do. If he’d needed money to pay off debtors or something she would have given it to him.

“That is my brother, Viserys Targaryen,” she confirms at last. “You said there’s a detective who wants to talk to me.”

They make Jorah wait in the hall, which makes her wonder whether someone suspects her of having something to do with what happened to Viserys… or him she supposes, remembering the look on his face when Viserys had raised his voice and hand to her.

“There’s a police report documenting threats from your husband towards your brother’s life, Ms. Targaryen. I have to ask, do you think this could be his doing?”

“No…” she shakes her head immediately, though she knows Drogo is very capable of following through on those threats if he’d wanted to. “Even if Drogo wanted to do this… he wouldn’t have thrown a plastic bag over Viserys’ head and axfixiated him. That’s not his style.”

If it were Drogo, he’d have bashed Viserys’ face in with his bare fists. If it were Drogo, he’d have wanted to look into her brother’s eyes when he killed him. She doesn’t elaborate as much to the detective, though.

“Supposing it wasn’t your husband,” the detective doesn’t sound totally convinced, but at least he moves on, “Who else might have wanted to kill your brother?”

“Viserys… had a knack for making enemies,” she admits. “He was prone to starting arguments and living beyond his means. What do his phone and social media say?”

“We’re looking through them, but I’d hoped maybe you could tell us if your brother was worried about anyone in particular of late.”

“I wish I could,” Daenerys admits, “But it’s been months since we last spoke. As you mentioned, my husband didn’t tolerate Viserys hanging around.”

_He didn’t actually stop showing up until after Jorah arrived though_ , she thinks. 

“How long did you say you thought it had been since his death?” she finds herself asking.

“Maybe four months ago, based on his financials and phone records,” the detective answers. “It’s hard to tell, since he was found in a freezer.”

When was the last time she’d seen or heard from Viserys? The night after Drogo’s last big match, when Jorah had escorted him foricbly from the premises? That had been about four months before.

Jorah is waiting for her when the detective finally releases her. She finds him pacing restlessly outside of the interview room like a caged beast.

“I called Drogo,” he informs her. “He’s catching the first flight back from Lhazar.”

“You didn’t need to worry him,” she tries to insist, but she feels drained and dizzy, swaying in place.

“You should sit down,” he tells her, catching her with his hands on her upper arms and guiding her down into a chair, “It’s been an intense morning. I know you loved your brother, despite his faults. 

He kneels in front of her, so their eyes are level, his evident concern making her wonder if she has done a worse job steeling herself and controlling her reactions than she thought. Though Jorah always seems to notice the smallest of things, so perhaps she’d be foolish to think she could conceal her distress from him.  
“You don’t think his death had anything to do with… well what he was saying about our father,” she considers, another possible reason for Jorah’s worry occuring to her..

Jorah glances around nervously, before answering in a hushed voice, “We can talk about that later, but unless something about what he was saying changed, there’s no real reason to think so. You need to rest, especially in your condition.”

“My condition…” she starts, before realizing exactly what he means. “Oh…”

She supposes it can’t have been that difficult for him to guess, despite how hard she’s attempted to hide her morning sickness by running water to cover the sounds of her vomiting and such. She’d hoped he would take today’s display on the way here as a sign of emotional distress, but now that she knows he is a aware it feels like a bit of a relief.

“I hadn’t intended to bring it up before you decided to, but I’m concerned you aren’t taking sufficient care of yourself. And why haven’t you told your husband yet?” Jorah reprimands softly.

“You didn’t…” she groans, knowing that Drogo will be furious if he believes she confided in Jorah about her pregnancy before him.

“I didn’t…” he reassures her, “But I easily could have not realizing he didn’t know.”

“It’s so early,” she says, “And I’ve been so sick. I just wanted to be give it a little more time before telling anyone.”

If she’d told either of them, Daenerys had suspected they would want to coddle her, when what she really wants is to be at work. 

“You aren’t worried about his reaction, are you?” Jorah guesses in the wrong direction.

“The opposite,” she explains, “I know he will be thrilled. I just didn’t want to get his hopes up, in case...”

She knows her mother suffered from numerous miscarriages. 

“Let’s get you home,” Jorah offers, reaching out his hand to help her up. She’s so lightheaded she almost loses her balance again when she stands and he has to steady her with one hand on her waist and the other around one shoulder. “And maybe see if you can keep some sustenance down.”

She tries to move her mouth to protest that she’s fine, but words don’t come out.

“I’ve got you.” Jorah’s voice is reassuring. If she closes her eyes it almost feels like one of those dreams she has, like she’s a princess and he’s her knight, as if he will sweep her up into his arms and carry her to safety like they’re on the cover of a romance novel.

He wouldn’t have hurt her brother, not Jorah. In her dreams she’s seen him kill, but to protect her or in battles, not cold blooded unprovoked murder. And this isn’t one of her dreams, it’s reality. The real Jorah isn’t a warrior but an academic with keen insights instead of a sharp blade. Drogo she can imagine having killed in a fit of rage, but it doesn’t seem like her brother’s death was that. Someone else must have done this to Viserys, but who?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, my dear readers. Work has been (and will probably continue to be) a bit intense. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and can't wait to hear what you all think!


	8. Chapter 8

“You should have it,” he tells her, turning away the offer of the last of their water, even as his throat feels like it is full of sand and fire.

Even in the modest shade provided by the makeshift tent he was able to construct out of canvas he’d been able to salvage from what had washed up of the ship’s sail, it is scorchingly hot. 

Daenerys’ usually pale skin has browned in the time they have been stranded here on this tiny island, really barely more than a few palm trees and a stretch of sand in the midst of the vastness of the sea, and her formerly fine dress is sun bleached and tattered. It only makes her violet eyes and silver hair even more striking. 

“No,” she says, “You haven’t been taking your share and I’ll be damned if I let you die first and leave me here alone with your corpse awaiting my own end.”

“You could still get rescued, princess. This is a common trade route,” he tells her unconvincingly.

“We’re going to die here, Captain Mormont, it is not the time for formalities, I think. Call me Daenerys.”

It’s the kind of thing he’d imagined her saying back when they were aboard his ship, on the days when she’d held his gaze just a little too long, held onto him for balance a little too comfortably. Of course that wouldn’t have happened, not if they were not going to die alone on this island together with only one another to cling to.

“Daenerys…” he breathes in her name, like a juicy fruit on his tongue. “You should probably call me Jorah then.”

“Jorah,” she says slowly, as if savoring his name as he has hers and no sound has ever been so sweet, no mouth more tempting than her chapped lips are in this moment. “I’m sorry I failed to fulfill my promise to bring you home.”

“It’s hardly your fault that my ship and crew fell to a storm,” he points out. “No one can control the weather.”

“That’s not what our ancestors believed,” she replies, and he isn’t sure if she is being serious or not.

“This is certainly the kind of situation that inspires people to turn to prayer,” he says noncommittally, trying not to let his gaze follow the rivulet of sweat traveling down her neck to the swell of her breast.

“You never really believed in the lost Valyrian temple and its supposed secrets, did you?” she asks.

“No,” he admits, “But you did, and that was good enough for me… is good enough for me.”

“Why?” she asks, her brows drawing together in thought. “Why was that enough for you, Jorah?”

“I would have followed you anywhere, Daenerys,” he confesses. “I’ve never had much faith in gods, but you I can’t help believing in.”

“Why?” she demands again.

“You’re special,” he tells her. “So much more so than you know.”

Even now he doesn’t add that it’s more than that, that he would gladly die for her because she’s more than a leader worth following. He is desperately hopelessly in love with this young woman many times above his station, even if he had indeed regained his lands and title. 

“That’s not really an explanation,” she tells him, but mercifully she doesn’t press for a more satisfactory one. _Surely,_ , he thinks, _Surely if there is any sense to the world she can’t die here with me like this._

As if on cue the sky darkens, a sign that is almost immediately followed by a sudden downpour of rain. They both scramble to their feet, reaching for anything they can find to catch the precious water.

Jorah turns towards Daenerys and finds her with her face lifted up towards the sky, eyes closed and mouth open, as the downpour washes the dirt and exhaustion from her. She turns around and sees him looking at her and she smiles brightly, the kind of smile men burn down cities for.

She grins up at him, “It’s a miracle.”

Maybe it’s the dehydration or the relief, but he can’t help himself: he leans down and kisses her soundly on the mouth. As soon as he does it he curses his impetuousness. But then, to his surprise, she kisses him back.

“You’re a miracle,” he breathes against her lips, and she pulls him closer with both hands and kisses him harder, with a greedy sort of neediness that leaves no room for doubt as to whether she wants him to continue. 

Jorah groans aloud as he comes to consciousness, the quickly fading sensation of Daenerys’ lips on his overwhelming and yet not nearly enough at the same time. He wrestles with the temptation to close his eyes and lower his hands and continue the dream’s theme in his imagination, body’s urgency warring with his feeling that he shouldn’t be dreaming about her in the first place, let alone fantasizing while awake.

He tries to conjure up some other image ultimately (actresses he’s always liked, his ex wife telling him she made a huge mistake leaving him) but all of their faces seem to turn into Daenerys’.

“Jorah…” he imagines her moaning his name as she sits astride him, nails raking lightly down his chest as she squeezes around his cock. He imagines her wetness running down from where they are joined, pooling at the base on his cock and coating his balls in her, as in truth he keeps one hand moving up and down his length and uses the other to cup his balls.

He visualizes touching her while she rides him, brushing aside the silver hair at the apex of her thighs to lightly caress her clit with feathery soft touches that she responds to by grabbing his hand with hers and guiding him to touch her with more pressure.

“Come for me,” she says in his mind’s eye, encouraging him with more urgent movements of her hips. In reality he speeds up the movement of his hand to match his reverie, moving the other to the head of his cock as he thinks of how she might envelop him, body giving way as much to his daydream of her shuddering in pleasure as he spills into her as his own hands jerking himself to completion.

The guilt rises back to the surface, as he’s cleaning himself up, throwing a robe on to head to the bathroom for a shower. He knows that it is both wrong and unhealthy, but he also recognizes that it is not exactly surprising, with all the close proximity between them and how long he’s been by himself. 

So as long as he doesn’t ever let it show, that’s as much as he can really be expected to hold himself to.

He runs into Daenerys in the hallway once again, in what seems to be a running theme. It is as if their sleep cycles are strangely aligned, especially when he wakes from one of those dreams. 

Her cheeks are flushed as are her throat and neck down to the edge of her robe. She seems to glow in the morning light and he can’t quite stop his imagination in time: thinking about kissing her as he did in today’s dream, pressing her up against the wall and untying the knot keeping her robe closed as he moves his mouth down her neck to tease her swollen breasts before moving lower and lower, until he is kneeling before her, greedily lapping up the arousal he can almost swear he smells emanating from her. 

“Daenerys…” he greets, and it feels like she colors more vibrantly at him saying her name, which must be his imagination of course. “I hope you slept well.”

“I ummm…” she really does look embarrassed and he can’t help wondering about the cause of that. She doesn’t look as though she’s feeling ill this morning, so it’s probably not that. 

“It’s not a trick question,” he rescues them both from the awkward pause. 

“Maybe I’m not really awake yet,” she suggests. 

“Missing your morning coffee?” he offers, knowing she’s given it up for the duration of her pregnancy. It’s also his reminder to himself, that she’s Drogo’s wife, soon to be the mother of Drogo’s child. Daenerys isn’t some fantasy from his unconscious. She’s a real woman whose life does not revolve around him and his late night longings.

“You have no idea,” she accepts his explanation, seeming to recover from whatever was affecting her a moment before.

They continue along their morning routines, both of them at the kitchen table working on their laptops when Drogo finally rises. He’s been sleeping a lot more of late. 

“You,” Drogo says to Daenerys, “should be resting more.”

“I’m fine,” Daenerys insists. 

“Mormont,” Drogo addresses him, “tell her she needs to rest more.”

Jorah quickly minimizes the window containing his half composed email to Varys, before searching for an out to the middle Drogo is trying to fling him into.

“It’s a matter of opinion,” he qualifies, “some doctors suggest that more activity during pregnancy is healthier while others insist on minimizing strain. I trust Daenerys to know her own body.”

He’s not exactly contradicting Drogo, but it’s not the answer the other man was looking for.

“You Westerosi, always thinking you know better than common sense,” Drogo scoffs, grabbing a protein shake out of the fridge and retreating to the back patio.

After a few moments, Daenerys closes her laptop and goes after him. Jorah can see their conversation, through the glass sliding door, Daenerys clearly trying to mollify Drogo.

He pulls back up his correspondence with Varys, who’d been very interested in the mysterious circumstances of Viserys’ death. 

Daenerys had seemed shaken that first day, when they went down to identify the body, but since then on the surface she’s been very composed about the situation. He suspects it must trouble her, and he knows that she is concerned about the possibility that there might be some connection between her brother’s death and her father’s, but if Daenerys is grieving for her brother she’s doing a good job hiding it.

Jorah hesitates, wondering if he should mention the idea of linking Viserys and Aerys’ deaths, and decides against it. Such a report could hardly help what he’s realized has become his main objective in these updates: to inspire Varys to associate Daenerys with the school by choice, in the form of a job offer.

Still he feels like he is operating in the dark, not knowing who was really behind Aerys’ death or why the university is so nervous about what his children might get up to. 

Deleting his attempted reference to the shadow over the Targaryen name, Jorah finishes up with some inane statements about their research going well instead. He hits send and shuts his own computer, turning away from the door as Drogo surrounds Daenerys with his big arms, laying claim to her as the two have evidently ended their little quarrel. 

He doesn’t need to watch this. 

Drogo’s car is gone when Jorah returns from his run. (What better way to burn off all uncomfortable sensations simmering just under the surface within him than a long run?) 

“I swear sometimes it feels like I keep having the same conversation with him over and over again,” Daenerys tells him, clearly embarrassed by Drogo this morning.

“Many people would argue that is a core element of marriage,” Jorah tells her, not exactly sure if he’s advising or teasing.

Daenerys sighs, untucking one leg from underneath herself and rising from her position at the kitchen table. She’s in cropped leggings and a sleeveless tunic, shape still slender though he cannot help noticing her breasts seem more pronounced. He’s not trying to stare, as he crosses the kitchen to get a glass of water.

“I forwarded you an email from Melisandre,” she says. “I want you to tell me what you think after you have a chance to shower and look over it.”

“What’s the gist?” he asks, once again thinking that Melisandre seems a great deal more involved than most funding agents.

“She’s secured most of the visas and paperwork for our first fieldwork trip,” Daenerys tells him, “But I want you to see if you notice anything that’s missing.”

Fishing his phone out of his pocket, Jorah scrolls through the attachments quickly. 

“Quath,” he notices, “That’s a rather remote choice for our first dig.”

“It is,” Daenerys agrees, and as Jorah looks up from his phone screen he catches her staring at him intently for a moment before she realizes he’s noticed her stare and she looks away.

“What did Drogo say when you told him?” Jorah can’t help asking.

“I haven’t yet,” she confesses, “But it’s not like he’s not always travelling for his job.”

Drogo really is gone a lot: between doing publicity events, sponsorships, training, and actually fighting. Still, Jorah suspects Drogo will not be too keen on his pregnant wife crossing the Red Waste.

“We could postpone the fieldwork,” he suggests. “Or someone else-”

“Don’t be absurd,” she cuts him off. “The last thing I am going to do is add fuel to some notion that women can’t perform as consistently as men due to reproductive responsibilities.”

He knows better than to argue when she uses that tone.

“Forget I said anything, then,” he demurs. 

“I know Drogo doesn’t understand why my work is so important to me, but I expect more from you,” she tells him.

“It was not my intention to call your commitment to your work or its validity into question,” he assures her. “I simply didn't want you to feel trapped.”

“Do I seem trapped?” she asks, voice and eyes softening as she looks up at him.

For a moment it feels like a trick question. Jorah wonders sometimes if Daenerys has any idea how beneath her Drogo really is. She deserves more than his basic territorial possession. 

She deserves more than Dothraki Sea University, more than this place. 

“Would you return to Westeros?” he finds himself asking, “I mean if there was a reason to, if you had a job offer. Would you want to discover your homeland?”

“It’s hard to think of it that way,” she tells him, “Most of my childhood memories are from Braavos, not before we left. What’s it like, Jorah? The place we come from.”

“The Seven Kingdoms as as different from each other as Lys is from Astrapor, Daenerys. The North, where I’m from, would probably seem cold and unwelcoming to you, but the Reach is verdant and fruitful. Dorne is the most like this place I suppose, though instead of grass there’s sand.”

“Do you miss it?” she asks, eyes piercing.

“Not as much as I once did,” he tells her, without elaborating that she is the reason for that change.

He thinks back to a dream he had last week, where they travelled north into the heart of winter. The cold had made her cheeks and nose rosy and they huddled so close her could feel the warmth of her breath. 

“I’m cold,” she’d admitted, shivering, as he’d led her into a cabin, building up a fire in the hearth with wood stacked against the wall. 

“Drink this,” he’d told her, offering her a mug of steaming liquid, watching the shadows of flames dance across her face.

“Jorah,” she’d called his name as he moved to look for more supplies, “Stay with me.”

So they had stayed there together, her nestled in the crook of his arm as he wrapped his cloak around them both. Before long she had drifted off, weight limp against him, and he’d carefully settled her down in front of the fire on the fur rug, wrapping more furs from a chest around her to keep her warm. 

When she’d murmured his name in her sleep, he hadn’t been sure whether to rejoice or weep.

“Jorah,” she’d breathed, “Jorah come back.”

It’s a foolish dream, he thinks, saccharine and pathetic, almost more so than the sort of dream he’d woken from this morning. Still, he catches sight of the phantom tattoo on her wrist, the other half of his own, and can’t help wondering why his dreams have been so vivid since he came here, more vivid than they’d ever been in his whole life.


End file.
